heres what happened in great detail.
im driving up hill on the highway, about 62 or 63 mph. then i gave it a little more throttle and the tranny downshifted and for about 2 or 3 seconds it was fine then the check engine light came on and flashed a few times. in overdrive the truck was shaking. so i turned off the OD. the shaking stoped. when i exited off the highway and came to a stop i noticed the truck was....shaking a good bit. idling weird...it just had a different sound than i know it as normal. i got it home, ran the obd2 on it. came up with codes for a misfire on 1 and a random misfire.

what could cause the truck to go from driving fine to have these misfires? ignition? fuel? mechanical? i really dont have the money to drop on looking into everything so if someone who has had something similar had this happen could chime in it would be great. thanks guys.

 

Random Misfire is a issue/question that comes up often.
Search this forum for "random misfire" and you'll get a slew of potential answers.

For me, it wasn't an all of a sudden thing, but something that was once in a blue moon and then gradually deteriorated.
I had taken care of all the other potential culprits as part of the upgrades that I was doing... other things improved, but the random misfire was occurring more often... I found my root cause as there was only two sensors that I hadn't changed, and it (the crank position sensor) was the easiest to do first... a new CPS and the problem went away, not to mention I gained a little responsiveness.

If you're around the 100k mark, the CPS is likely deteriorating and could use replacing anyway... but if you don't want to drop ~$90 for a CPS (factory), read the other threads, do your faultfinding, and replace the minimum.

 

Pull your plugs, and see what they look like. I see you have an aftermarket manifold, so, I don't think the plenum is your problem. Spillage, it think, has it correct.

 

well considering i just did a tune up about 15 hundred miles ago i dont think its that. im leaning towards the ignition coils but im gonna pay for a diagnostic test and see what comes up

 

What plugs did you put in?

 

Eddy manifold like the hughes airgap? To cool got any pics? To help us take pics of the fix.

 

so this morning the check engine light was gone. it ran a little rough..maybe its all in my mind. and it seems to have a slight loss of power. im thinking that cat is clogged. so whats the procedure for gutting the cat untill i can afford to buy a new direct fit cat. i dont have a welder and rather not pay someone to weld it. but i really dont want any exhaust leaks. can i trust a band clamp? at least if i gut it and it runs better i know the cat is the issue.. the other thing im suspecting it could be is the torque converter...which im hoping and praying it is not. that would be a ball buster for sure. but say it is a bad converter, driving with a bad converter, can that cause damage to other parts?

its been a long day. sorry for typing so much and all over the place.

 

Pull the upstream O2 sensor... if it runs better, that points to a clogged cat.

 

What type of driving are you mostly doing? I found when i am at school (the truck rarely goes over 2k) that it seems carbon builds up. Letting her loose every once in awhile seems to have helped my issue.

 

not to jump off topic here but real quick, spillage, do those long tube headers interfere with your front drive shaft at all? i was told to shy away from long tubes on a 4x4 truck cause they hit on the front drive shaft.

ok back on topic. when you say upstream, you mean the o2 plug before the cat?