well, i finally got back to where the truck could be parked and left, and tore into it. the repair on the throttle body gasket channel is holding, so i took the intake manifold off and cleaned the soot out. the upper row of plugs was fine, showing normal wear. the iridiums on the bottom row, however.... all the threads coated with oil. ground points crusted with black, one broken insulator around the electrode, some oil in the plugs (the one with the broken insulator was the worst) could running with the massive air leak for so long have caused some of the problems? also, how do you tell if the coil is bad? is there a way to check across it with a multimeter? anyway... took it on a hour and a half drive, not a stutter out of it. I may have just treated the symptoms, but it gives me a starting point from reading the plugs. i will post pics if i can get them to load, or if anyone is interested enough, send me a PM, i will email them to you...

 

"First of all it doesn't take 2 weeks to fix your truck unless they have it parked out of sight behind the shop. Believe me, no one's putzing with it all that time and not getting paid for their hours"

Nope that only happens when you have a bad injector and the Service Manager is a flaming idiot and has to call an engineer to figure it out.......