I know it was frustrating going for a drive and the truck behaved. The 350 has good power, rolls down the highway nice that’s for sure. I don’t think it’s got a big cam in it and if it is cammed it’s the mildest “RV” cam I’ve ever seen. The lopey idle is not the cam I can attest to that.
The IAC is hunting all over the place though. If we had a tach on it I’d bet it was moving a couple hundred rpm. Plus when you described the feeling sometimes like the truck “wants to go” on its own is a classic symptom of a IAC hanging open. @Wes Harden saw mine doing it last year on onion creek. Same thing would not idle down and was like its own cruise control. The crappy thing is the quality of parts we get even if known name brands like AC Delco and Standard Ignition ain’t what it used to be. Farming production to china while it saves all money sucks when we have to replace stuff way more often than we should. I’m on my third IAC in two years and keep a spare in the truck just because they are crap. It sucks but it’s the reality now.
The plug wire find was purely accidental. It sounded like an exhaust leak until a spark caught my eye. Which of course won’t help idle quality when you are running on 7 holes at that point. While it cruised down the highway with plenty of power yesterday, you would have felt a hard miss as soon as you started climbing elevation on I-70 west of Golden. So we got lucky on that one.
I’m betting even though the wires are pretty fresh AC Delco units, the shop did have to pull them to run the compression test. I’m not blaming them, but with the quality of stuff you only get so many removal and installs before a boot takes a dump. Even less if they only grab the boot and not use the tool like you got.
I’m a little more liberal with die-electric grease. A little dab on the tip of the plug and a little in the boot smeared around.
Once you got those knocked out I think you are ready to go. While waiting on the stuff to put in Thursday take a minute and do a nut/bolt check on the suspension since you went though it all. I’m a big proponent of using a paint pen to mark the nut/bolt after you check it. This will do two things for you. One, you got a visual of which ones you checked until you get them all. Two, after running on a couple of trails it’s a Quick Look to see if anything has moved. You only need a wrench if something moved.
I told Drew if he wanted to take my Tech 1 with him just in case he could. I’m in town until Wednesday when I take off for Indy to work a big Buick/GMC training event at IMS or else I’d be there with him. If anybody helping in Moab wants it with him I’ll get it to him before I bug out to Indy.
The IAC is hunting all over the place though. If we had a tach on it I’d bet it was moving a couple hundred rpm. Plus when you described the feeling sometimes like the truck “wants to go” on its own is a classic symptom of a IAC hanging open. @Wes Harden saw mine doing it last year on onion creek. Same thing would not idle down and was like its own cruise control. The crappy thing is the quality of parts we get even if known name brands like AC Delco and Standard Ignition ain’t what it used to be. Farming production to china while it saves all money sucks when we have to replace stuff way more often than we should. I’m on my third IAC in two years and keep a spare in the truck just because they are crap. It sucks but it’s the reality now.
The plug wire find was purely accidental. It sounded like an exhaust leak until a spark caught my eye. Which of course won’t help idle quality when you are running on 7 holes at that point. While it cruised down the highway with plenty of power yesterday, you would have felt a hard miss as soon as you started climbing elevation on I-70 west of Golden. So we got lucky on that one.
I’m betting even though the wires are pretty fresh AC Delco units, the shop did have to pull them to run the compression test. I’m not blaming them, but with the quality of stuff you only get so many removal and installs before a boot takes a dump. Even less if they only grab the boot and not use the tool like you got.
I’m a little more liberal with die-electric grease. A little dab on the tip of the plug and a little in the boot smeared around.
Once you got those knocked out I think you are ready to go. While waiting on the stuff to put in Thursday take a minute and do a nut/bolt check on the suspension since you went though it all. I’m a big proponent of using a paint pen to mark the nut/bolt after you check it. This will do two things for you. One, you got a visual of which ones you checked until you get them all. Two, after running on a couple of trails it’s a Quick Look to see if anything has moved. You only need a wrench if something moved.
I told Drew if he wanted to take my Tech 1 with him just in case he could. I’m in town until Wednesday when I take off for Indy to work a big Buick/GMC training event at IMS or else I’d be there with him. If anybody helping in Moab wants it with him I’ll get it to him before I bug out to Indy.

