cyclones2011

I would like to share with people some information that hopefully will save them some time and money. Sorry if this is posted in the wrong place or previously posted before but I have scoured the internet and not found all this together so here we go. 1996 Chevy Tahoe vin code R. Motor was rebuilt around 175,000 miles. I had 1 good month of service out of it before my troubles began. It first started with just a little miss every once in a while. It would kinda stutter a bit and then go on. That turned into a pretty solid miss often. It gave me a random cylinder misfire code. I did a normal tune up cap, rotor button, plugs and wires and filters. No change. I did some research and thought that it might be the fuel pump. I didn’t check the fuel pressure because I didn’t have a gauge so I went ahead and changed the whole fuel pump assembly. That didn’t fix it. At this point I’m several hundred dollars into it and still have a miss. This is my daily driver so I have to do things as I can. I do some more research and think that it might be an intake leak. I pressure teat the cooling system and see it bubble up in a place or two between the intake and the head. So here we go, I pull the intake over a weekend. I am cleaning everything up late that night and getting ready to finish it in the morning when I check out the distributor. I see that the gear is EXTREMELY worn, the teeth were so sharp you could about shave with them. I felt pretty sure I had found the problem at this point. Bought a new gear and replace the bad one. Took it down the road and the code cleared on its own and ran good….for a month! Same thing started happening again. Pulled the dist. again and guess what the gear was worn again so off to autozone I go. While I was there another guy came in and overheard me talking to the counter guy and chimed and about how the dist. on those motors were junk and to replace it asap with a metal bodied one because the one in it now was some sort of composite plastic. A new aluminum body one from the zone will set you back around $300. I didn’t have that kinda cash right then so I opted to change the gear again and try to find one cheaper. Changed the gear and went back to running better. This time the code never cleared and I still had the random misfire code. I get on ebay and find a distributor from Whites Performance in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comKnoxville</st1:City> <st1:State w:st="on">Tennessee</st1:State></ST1 for around $100 shipped *JACKPOT*. It came brand new with cap, button, cam sensor and gear. It was ready to go. I changed it out and it ran better but still not quite right. This dist. had a fixed tab like a V6 and if you get one go ahead and slot the hole for the hold down before you put it in so you can adjust the timing right. I didn’t do that. So still have a slight miss and a P1345 cam/crank correlation code. Check both sensors and they are good so I know it’s in the adjustment. I just don’t have a scanner to read the cam retard. So things roll on and I drive it with the miss. Well the miss gets worse. It seems to miss worse at an idle than at higher rpm’s but it is still driveable. Now for the really strange part, as it gets colder it gets harder to start. If you hold the key over to get it to start it won’t hit at all. You have to bump it over several times. You bump it and it tries to start and runs really bad and dies. Just keep doing it over and over and then finally it starts chugging and catches itself and runs. This went on for a couple months until it was getting to the point I was killing the battery trying to get it to start. At this point I gave up and carried it to a local mechanic who has a shop behind his house. I figure he has the tools to diagnose it better than me and I was tired of throwing parts at it. He does a pressure check and sees that the pressure is dropping very fast. And knowing that I have changed the fuel pump already he rules that out. So, he find one of the pins bent for the injector on the spider and when he took the upper intake off the was fuel standing in the lower intake and noid light show everything firing from the computer. Changed the spider out with the new updated one and presto! Starts fine and runs great with no miss. The only code it throws now is the P1345 for the cam /crank correlation and I can fix that myself. I really hope this helps someone cause I about pulled my hair out through it all.

73shark

Welcome to the forum.

Great info, should help someone down the road.

FYI you can get a fuel pressure gauge for about $40-$50. That and a good scanner for today's shadetree mechanic.

MDTAHOE

If you are eating dis gears then the cam gear is shot also. Unless you replace the cam it will be a vicious cycle. I have seen this a few times before You will need someone to check the cam retard must be 0 + or- 2 anything else will eventually set 1345 again.