Bought the car with dead headlights, dead taillights, and a misfire that comes and goes.
Headlights fixed (switch contacts needed cleaning)
Taillights fixed (short in bulb from a water leak, also fixed)
Miss remains.
So far I've checked the plugs, all look the same and like this:
Ran a compression test while the engine was warm (I think it was warm, my gauge is acting strange, more on that later)
165 160 165 163 165 163
So all looks okay there.
Idle pulls a somewhat solid 20inhg of vacuum, and drops about an inch when it misses (normal?) but the idle changes based on the mood of the engine that day.
The timing I adjusted close to stock with the vacuum gauge, I'll be driving over to AutoZone in a bit to get a timing light, and set it back to 20 degrees. Might check fuel pressure while I'm at it. What else should I be checking to track this down?
I'm not sure if this is related, but while warming up my temperature gauge while randomly jump up to the middle of the gauge face (where it should be when warmed up) then it will drop back to zero or somewhere midway between regardless of actual temperature. Would this affect fuel pressure or anything like that? Can the idle controls cause a misfire?
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