[bessie66]

Undertaker thanks for the congrats! All of you guys have been awesome, thank you.

PROBLEM FOUND: the new distributor's ground was not solidly grounded... how did that happen..? In comparison - the old OE hei dist has screws on the 4 corners of the coil, one of these screws held the ground down, then the coil cap went over the coil. The new dist did not have these screws due to the style of coil cover it came with. Somehow the "engineers" thought that the coil cover itself was enough to pinch the ground and it would hold ...... amazing.. so I used the old coil cover from the OE style distributor to secure connections. but guess what, friends ... a new issue. F***

I reset timing and ol' faithful fired up instantly, idled gracefully. I let it run a little bit then gave it three short revs and things got ugly. Truck started gagging, not enough to kill it, but enough to warrant shutting it down. .. i let it sit for a few minutes, it started right up and sounded great so i gave it some revs.. sounded decent, then I noticed the idle climbing so i got the timing light out and discovered it had increased it's timing by 4 degrees or so, and appeared to still be increasing. What in god's name is going on at this point?? By this point the truck was running hot, granted it's 86 outside w/ 80% humidity, but it was running way hot.

I shut the truck down and noticed light smoke coming out where the water pump(is new) outlet meets the hose that connects to the bottom on the radiator(new 6 months ago). And of course the radiator cap was hissing out pressure, not smoke or fluid, just pressure.

I'm thinking there's more going on than just a clogged fuel filter ... please help.. again!