I just bought a 91 4x4 with 22re and the owner thought it had a bad ring cause it will foul the #4 spark plug out pretty quick and the plug is solid black. It idle good with a noticable miss and it loses some power when its warmed up so i checked the timing with the jumper wire on and it was no where near 5* so i turned the distributor and had to turn it as far as it would go to get it to 5* and when i did the truck would just barely idle and would bogged down and was hard to start so i turned it back to where it was and left it alone for now. and also the valves are pretty noisy and when i set the timing to 5* it quietened down but would barely run. what do you guys think could be the problem here?

 

so i guess no one has any ideas.

 

I'm not very smart on these, I'm learning still... But my chiltons manual says for a tune up to adjust the valve lash and check timing. Maybe the tapping is because you need to adjust your valve lash? I'm replacing my timing chain today and tomorrow, if your timing is off maybe it's not a bad idea for you to do the same?

 

if you had to turn the distributor that far to get 5* then the distributor is most likely off a tooth or two in either direction.

 

I JUST had this problem 2 weeks ago. My runner was constantly fouling out the #1 plug so I would just replace it and forget it, (real smart).

Untill I developed a miss that would not go away and the thing ran like a tractor. So I parked it and did the timing with the destributer etc, even pulled the front cover and did the timing set with the engnbldr kit with the works (h2o pump and all). Buttoned it all up and could not get the miss to go away even when I advanced the cam gear or retarded it a tooth (thinking that I messed up the reinstall).

So after taking the front cover off and putting it back together 3 times! I did a pressure test on the cylinders and came up with 150, 200, 200, 195 (One through four respectivley). I didn't think that 150 was bad but why was it low while everything else is really good, so I pulled the head and eureka!! My #1 exaust valve was not seating all the way.

I brought the head to the shop on Monday and they put the valve on a machine and that joker was ever so slightly bent and had hardly any face left on it. Now I don't know for sure that a valve job is going to solve my issue but I am pretty optimistic.

Just throwing that in there in hopes that this helps, good luck.

 

Make sure that your idle is also at 850 RPMs when you jump the wires and check the timing. Have you checked the vacum lines?

 

Thanks for the replies, I'm going to look more into all this today the Guy I got it from thought it had a bad or broke ring but he said it started missing and getting weak and was smoking some so he had a different head put on and it still ran rough but quit smoking for a couple of weeks but started back so I'm getting confused

 

I checked the plugs and they don't look like oil fouled but carbon fouled like its running rich, the truck is running pretty good but it has a miss at idle that you can hear and it does it about every 6 or 7 sec and i checked the codes and there was a code 21 which is o2 sensor. would that cause it too miss at idle?