Diagnosis............murder? semi-long

[Joseph Pendergrass]

Well, I was thinking about trying to clean out the intake manifold a little
bit with some carb cleaner w/o taking it off seeing as how that's too much
trouble.  I squirted some in there and got a plastic stick and zip tied a
cloth to it and raked back and fourth a little, I didn't really do anything
but I just wanted to see.  Since I took off the intake hose (stock intake) I
looked in the hose coming from the valve cover to the intake and I found a
wire brush left in there for some odd reason.  I also got crazy with some
dielectric grease and put it on the battery terminals and the plug wires at
both ends (plugs and distributor) and also on two grounds on the intake
manifold.  I left the throttle plate open for a while for most of the carb
cleaner to evaporate, then I wanted to see if the grease would help starting
the car, not that is was bad in the first place, but still.  Well, it died
the first time cuz I didn't realize I had left it in gear (dumbass me), and
ran like crap the second time (thought that was normal b/c of the carb
cleaner left over), let it run for a while and it felt like it was missing.
I pulled #1 plug to just hear/see/feel what it was like if it wasn't firing
at all and put it back, still seemed like it would miss on occasion.  I
drove it around and it felt pretty normal, came back and sat there and went
from idle to about 5.5K rpms a handful of times and could feel a thump thump
no matter what rpm I was at, so I think it's missing.  Oh yeah, I noticed
oil around the plug wires in the valve cover, aren't you supposed to use
sealant around the plug holes, or not?  Anywho, it's stock, and I'm running
93 octane.  Got a friend to advance the timing, but it didn't seem to want
to and he said that it seemed like it was already advanced.  What should I
do now?