Well y'all; at the risk of sounding pathetic, let me say that my only transportation are two trucks, a 94 and a 91 6cyl dakotas; the 94 has a bad trans leak so i've been driving the 91. i had driven the 91 on a 3 hour trip and it did fine but coming back home, the truck sort of 'coughed' three times in a row and later it coughed once. i filled it up with premium and have been driving it around town for a month. yesterday in suddenly coughed and nearly died...i didn't want to be stranded and i was able to turn around and drive it back home.....what is likely causing this? the truck has 170,000 miles on it. thanks

 

When was the last time you changed the fuel filter? What other maintenance have you done (plugs, wires, distributor, etc)

 

Thanks Robert; i only recently bought the truck and the previous owner had done some work on it but not sure what work he did other than installing two glasspack mufflers and i haven't done anything other than had a starter installed....since u said that, i can only hope its a fuel filter....

 

I'd probably do a minimum tune...change plugs, distributor cap/rotor fluids, and fuel filter. Then go from there.

 

Okay then; sounds like a plan. thank you

 

finally have a man comin to look at my truck tomorrow and he wants to charge me 80.00 just to change out the cap and rotor...sound excessive to you or par for the course? thanks

 

$80 seems a bit high since its pretty simple job that shouldn't take an experienced mechanic more than 20 minutes.
I'm pretty sure you can do that yourself unless you are physically unable to. There are plenty of YT vids. You only need to have a longish phillips screw driver, and know the firing order to make sure you get the plug wires back onto the correct places. I use a silver sharpee to mark each wire hood with the cylinder it comes from.
This should help You can definitely use a long screw driver to remove the bolts he uses the ratchet on. I'm not sure why he struggle but my 94 3.9 the cap comes right on up.

 

yeah he makes it look easy! thanks for the estimation; i think 80 is too high as well

 

If he's coming to you, that's why it is $80. When you consider his travel time plus gas, and then the time to do the job on site, possibly in the heat of the day, it adds up.

 

Yes sir, thanks; i get that. i told him let's wait till after the 1st so i'll have more money