That plastic peice in tye distributor is the dist pick up, or cam position sensor, you can pull it out and clean it then check.underneath of it. I highly doubt any mud made it past that though. Did you inspect the y-pipe thoroughly for.dents? They are restrictive from the factory so all it will take is a small dent to bottleneck your exhaust gasses. Is your check engine light on? If not then verify that it even works. When you turn the key on it should come on for a fewseconds. How deep in the mud where you? Was it muddy water or just.mud?

 

I am old and lacking patience...so I am not going to go back and reread this trhread to see what the original problem was.

I will ask....do you have the service manual that can be downloaded from the FAQ/DIY section? If not, download it and read up a little. Seems there is more that you need to know thatn what is known right now as evidenced by the disty comments. Also appeasr that whoever is giving you advice is less than knowledgeable on these trucks as well.

 

The Y pipe is fine I had just previously cut my old muffler that had a blow out off a while ago and put on a direct fit turbo muffler and just let it dump off under the cab and it all looks clean and more so my muffler was clean believe it or not. And that piece of plastic with the wires under the cap was filthy and I really didn't clean it to well unless you count spraying with brake cleaner a good job. I'm going to give that piece a real good cleaning and see if that fixes it.

 

Yea all my advice is coming from a guy that hot rodded in the 60s and 70s:/

 

I should probably note theres been a small dent in the driver side y pipe since 2000 when my grandpa had the 318 put back in after a problem with emissions on the crate motor he had in it. The motor really only has around 34k miles on it estimate. It's ran fine like that for me the past 5,000miles.

 

I can eat 49 eggs..

 

I built engines and hot rodded in the 70's. But fuel injected engines have little in common as far as anything other that block and rotating parts.

(I can only eat about 23 eggs.....and then gas gets to be a problem.....)

 

What about the check engine light? Do you have acess to a scanner? Again was it muddy water or just mud? If that cam position sensor got soaked I would probably replace it anyways.

If you are getting spark at the plug then check for fuel presure at the fuel rail. One either side there is shrader valve, looks like a tire stem with a cap, prime the fuel pump by turning the key on, then press in on that valve. If you get fuel out then try to get a decent sample in a.clear jar so you can tell if it looks like lemonade. If it looks like lemonade then you got water in the tank. If it looksa fine then rent you a fuel gauge from autozone and hook it to that schrader valve and get a reading. If it is lower than 40Psi then replace fuel pump and filter.

If you check all of this I am sure you will find your problem. Please downlaod the free FSM as said before. It contains a wealth of knowledge. Rear the decription pages for how the ingnition system and fuel system work and its knowledge that will prove to pricless.


I can only eat three egga, but I did eat 3lbs of nachoes for lunch today!!!

 

In 70's I was driving a ten second legal streeter that got nines on slicks. The engine was called a Magnum then, but it had precious little in common with the Magnums we're talking about here. In those days the only ones had computers were banks and government, knowhuddamean?

I'm still thinking exhaust is your problem. An off-road stick that leaves your engine running like crap is almost always an exhaust problem. Unbolt the pipes going into your cat -- on your '98 there are two -- get the cat out of the way and run that mufker just long enough to determine if exhaust is the problem. (Ain't no Y-pipe on a '98... it's two pipes into the cat.) If it still runs like crap, fine. Report your observations back here and we can go forward.

 

Well I decided to take another look at the cat I had my buddy start the truck up and give it gas while i sat underneath her and sure enough my cat started glowing red... I'm gunna change the plugs for the hell of it tomorrow and crack the headers and see what she does. Ill thow a vid up for you guys if it fixes the problem because we all know how cool open headers sound.