Ideas solicited

[rdh@sli.com (Robert D. Houk)]

   >The symptoms:  It starts instantly.  When the rev's are below about
   >2500, it misses pretty bad.  Above 3000 RPM's it seems to run fine.
   >It misses at idle also.

   First thing I would check is the spark plug wires.  If one is arcing to
   ground from time to time, the old 5 will run ruff.  My 4000 Q exhibited the
   same symptoms and I finally found it by trial and error.   ---JCG.

Um, yes. I ended up removing the metal RFI shield around my distributor
because of intermittent arcing (mostly when it was cold and wet...). Any
arcing will generally make a very sharp snapping sound, and should be 
quite visible if it's dark (unless of course the arcing is buried inside
the cable guide where you can't see it). It causes a random and inter-
mittent "stumble" usually at low rpms, and of course once the engine warmed
up, the moisture condensing on the distributor housing dried right off
(that engine compartment is *toasty*), so I kept trying to blame the cold-
start/enrichment circuitry . . .

					-RDH