Bad distributor pickup?
 

Ok guys, this is on my work truck, '95 F-150 5.0. It's been acting up for awhile, as in going dead, but intermittent, and would usually fire right back up after a few minutes. It's most definitely ignition related, because I'm only getting fire off and on. It has a brand new coil, and the coil is getting power in with the ignition switch turned on, and it's not the ignition module (tried it out with a known good module). Yesterday I noticed some crud around the pickup in the distributor, sprayed it out with some ether/starting fluid, wiped it out, and it fired right up and ran great until tonight. Put a test light on the #1 wire for the PIP, with the switch on, and got a solid light off the harness coming from the dizzy while spinning it over with my remote switch from under the hood, and the same on the module (it should be flashing). I tried checking it like that yesterday while it was running, and as soon as I pierced the wire with the test light, it stalled. This is the same type of distributor as the '94-'95 Mustang GT/Cobra with the remote mouted ignition module. I'm 99% sure it's the pickup in the distributor, but wanted some second opinions. Watcha think? :shrug:

My mustang had a similar problem, wound up replacing the distributor because the shaft was warped and would hit the pickup about every 10th rotation.

My Cobra had similiar issues as your discribing, I changed the distributor and so far so good.

Well, I bought a new pickup for it, we'll see if that's the problem. I'm 99.99% sure that's the problem, considering all the tests I ran on it. Regardless, this one has almost 200k miles on it, so it could probably use a replacement. :lol:

Yep, bad pickup. I ended up replacing the whole distributor though, due to the shaft seal being dryrotted and falling apart when I pressed out the shaft.