So, let's recap the Holiday Monday Ramcharger Adventure, with a little bit of Roadkill-ness thrown in:
My wife and I went down to Alexandria, VA to pick up some furniture from my mother in the ramcharger. Hopped in the car, drove two hours, not an issue at all, no hiccups, great fuel economy, relatively smooth ride for an '89 truck/SUV.
We drive to my mother's house, the storage unit, load up the furniture, drive back to her house, my mother cooks us some food, and we hop in the truck and head home at about 4pm.
I drove the truck no more than 2 miles, and it sputters, lopes, and I rolled up to a red light, and it just dies. It shook, stuttered, and then finally died. I crank it again, it cranked, cranked, cranked, and nothing. So, I gave it a sec, checked the fuses, tried to put the four-way-flashers on, only to remember that I haven't fixed that part yet, and I hopped out of the car, popped the hood, and stared. I jiggled the fuses again, and it turned over. Awesome.
So, we drive not even 1/2 a mile down the road, and it does the same thing again... Keep in mind, I just replaced the entire ignition system south of the ignition coil. I pull it across a lane or two of traffic while it's dying, and get onto the shoulder, on the bridge that goes over the i95 express-lanes. Then I decided to check the battery terminals again, even though I've got horn, radio, lights, turn signals, etc. thinking it might be a heat issue. I grabbed a wrench out of the back, removed the terminals, reinstalled them, then removed the wires going into the terminals, blew off all of the corrosion, and replaced them again. I got inside to crank it, and it turned over, ran for a bit, then died again.
Ok, so I'm thinking at this point, it's the ignition system. I've got power, I can smell the fuel, I know it's getting air because I can smell the fuel out the tail pipe, so it's spark... I called my mother to inform her that we're stranded, and need her to navigate us through the NoVA HELL to get to a gas station, so I can tear into the truck and diagnose it. While she's on the way, I looked into the engine bay.
Now, side note, if you've never seen a Dodge Ramcharger in person, it's a big truck, roughly equivalent to a 2500 or F250 today, so it requires climbing onto the wheel hub, stepping onto the bumper, and supporting yourself on something in the engine that isn't hot, then moving your hands to the front cowl (where the windshield wipers are) so you can actually see inside. You clean the windshield by standing on top of one of the tires, then stepping onto the cowl. I did this Dodge-inspection-dance, and, (important detail here in retrospect), put my left hand on the grille, right hand on the air-cleaner, and left hand on the cowl, just next to the ignition coil. I proceed to reseat all of the spark plug wires, jiggle all of the essential harness connections on the distributor, coolant sensor, and A/C compressor clutch.
As I finish with the harness-jiggling, I sliped slightly, and my left hand bumped the ignition coil.
So, I got back into the truck, started it, and it ran. It ran fine. I revved it, and it it responded. I put it into drive, and revved it against the brake, and it was fine. So, I turned the engine off, got out, and waited for my mother to arrive. She arrived, and lead me to a BP station that after explaining that I needed something for a car through the two-inch-thick bullet-resistant "glass" the attendant explained they don't sell it. So we went back to the car to find an autoparts store on the interwebs, only a couple hundred feet away. Truck cranked, ran, and we drove over there.
I bought gloves, contact cleaner, and battery terminal cleaner/protectant, still thinking it was a power issue. (I was absolutely correct, just looking in the wrong place.) I was convinced it was the "engine computer" which is nothing more than a couple resistors, diodes, a relay, and a 4-bit microprocessor that has less processing power than the charger for a cell phone. I sprayed everything I could think of, still thinking it was the "computer" that was the issue. Sprayed the contacts, sprayed the harness, battery connectors, reseated the plug wires again after cleaning them, sprayed the plugs, etc. It wasn't a good area, and I was convinced that the PoLice Officer in a radio car rolling around the lot was about to ticket me for "working on a vehicle in public" or whatever NoVA rule I was probably breaking, so we beat feet out of there.
I'm satisfied, so we got going again. My mother leading us the way out of there onto 95. This time the truck died while we were on i95-i395 merge, commonly known as "The Mixing Bowl", I had to cross approximately 8 lanes of traffic, at about 20-ish mph, with no power at all. I watched my mother pull away, and I got the truck into neutral, and proceeded to roll to the right shoulder, and got into the best-possible worst-spot possible. I hopped out, popped the hood, and stared again. Jiggled everything again, and tried starting it again. This time it cranked, cranked, cranked, and then it backfired. AWESOME. I tried cranking again, and it cranked for a while, then backfired again. AWESOME. I know what it is.
I hopped out, looked at the low-voltage side of the ignition coil, jiggled the ring-terminals, then sprayed some contact cleaner on them, and jiggled them again. I hopped back down out of the engine bay, threw the contact cleaner onto the seat, and cranked it. It ran. It ran a lot better than it ever has before. I hopped out, slammed the hood shut, then hopped back in the seat and proceeded to merge onto the highway.
No issues for the remaining 100-ish miles home. I'm still kicking myself for not touching those terminals... It would have saved a whole lot of adrenaline shakes, fear, time, and general fear of death on a highway.
And here's the rub: it got like 17mpg or more on the trip home. lol.
Now I'm getting told the new tires are at least a week and a half out.