You might want to try another ECU.. If you have a spare or another stick it on??????

The problem setting lifters is they have a tendency to bleed down. Then to get resistance you they could easily go down .100 before you feel any. up and down to see if you can feel the light spring in them!! Tough to get right without seeing the lifter.
I would try backing them all off a turn that can't hurt anything. run it and see which ones if any develop play and tic?

Ok, Mine did stay at a little over 80 lbs when it did it, but I didnt let it pop much either. when I backed off the pedal a bit the oil was right there again.

I hope you get this resolved, I know the frustration

Is The Fuel funky smelling or maybe has too much racing fuel in it? My old Friend was playing with his harley at the track and it had problems with racing fuel in it. He went back to pump gas and it ran great. The old speed secret I heard is you never want to run more octane than is required by combustion cylender temperature. Lower octane fuels burn hotter and faster. (if you want to check pushrods)> It sounds like you have adjustable rockers take off the intake and valve covers loosen each push rod one at a time, with it way too loose does the lifter plunger come all the way up to the plunger snap ring pushing it up tight to its upper limit of travel if the snap ring and plunger are tight the lifter is pumped up you can the adjust the lifter preload . I would try tightening the rockers down while spinning the push rods back and forth untill they just start to stop spinning(0 lash)and then go an additional 3/4 turn and tighten the locknut on almost any engine with hydraulic lifters. My cam in my 440 is rated 1500 -5500 rpm. when my engine was young I maxed it out in high gear around 6300 rpm when it started missing and ticking loudly . I pulled over and stopped. cooled off momentarily and restarted it. It was ticking. I let it idle; after a few minutes all the lifters pumped up it ran great all the way home (running below 5500 rpm) and has run great over ten years now. Food for thought. Hope this helps. Allways refer to factory shop manuals for proper saftey procedures and specifcations. good luck. Are you using the higher rpm ecu from mopar that might also fix it.

OK, here is the recording of a first and second gear run. The quality is low due to recording it with a cell phone. Something I really hadn’t noticed until I listened to this recording is that a small miss is present all the way through both gears. You really can’t tell very well, but first gear is pulling from 3000 through 6000. I put in a second tach and found that when it stops gaining RPM it is actually a hair over 6K. Maybe this is all I can expect. I hope not since it is still pulling really hard when it starts to breaks up. I would like to get it up to at least 6700. Also I had the coil resistor bypassed during that test. I couldn’t leave it that way since the ECU was heating up.
Road Runner Miss Audio

That really sounds like valve float to me! I would start by taking 1 turn of pre load out. even if it ticks a bit try it again, if no ticks take another 1/2 turn out and try again! you can't hurt anything doing this test!!

The fact that it was sitting for awhile can lead you to think valvespring. I am trying to follow your post but am confused on a couple things. I don't know if it is the engine or the way you are phrasing it.
You said your distributor is off 180 and that it is not a problem. I assure you, it is.You would be firing the exhaust stroke.You also say it is firing at BDC, no way. That is 90 off and aint gonna run. Checking phase with different caps really doesn't tell you anything about the cap you are trying to run with.
On your valve adjustment, you really ought to use the Exhaust Opening/Intake Closing method instead of the old "chart" style.Have you priced springs for that cam? Probably not a bad investment. I agree with most that is likely ignition or valve float. Does your car have a tach? If so what does the tach do when it misses? If the tach bounces on and off, you are losing ignition. Keep at it.

Thanks for everyones help.

Dodgem, I agree now that it is probably valve float. However I am wondering what the slight miss is through the lower RPM’s in first and second gear? My next step will be adjusting the valves a couple of different ways to see what affect that has.

Youngblood, The distributor is off by 180* but the wires have been rearranged appropriately or it wouldn’t be running at all. I connected another tach to verify my in dash one, which I found is way off. It is an Autometer and it is rock solid when it hits 6K and stops climbing.

dodgeboy11, I have tried both Autolite and Champion plugs. The Autolites were AR52. I don’t have the Champion part number with me, but they were the equivalent heat range to the Autolite. They appeared to be burning well and were light brown.

The only reason I tried race gas was to see if it made any difference as compared to 93 octane pump gas. It did not.

The spring pressures were within a couple of pounds of what the cam card calls for. The cam is a Crane 689531. The springs were 131 Lbs closed and 341 Lbs open. The cam card says maximum RPM should be 6400 and it says valve float should be 7000. I am using Comp Cams 8921 hydraulic retrofit roller lifters. Comp claims they should be good to at least 6500.

All I an add is what minivan said might try another ECU, I think someone said parts store ones are are only 15 bucks or so & I would suggest reducing your reluctor gap to ~.005" on the tighest one as different reluctor vanes stick out a bit more & maybe experimenting w slowing your timing some just for a 1 day test.

I discovered that I am running one step colder plug than the former owner used. Could only one step colder cause any of my issues? The plugs look good.

Well I think it is time to close this thread until Spring. THANKS to everyone who commented and tried to help me. There were some great ideas presented that I will keep in the back of my mind for years.

Here are my conclusions:

Since I have replaced every part of the ignition system I no longer believe this could be and ignition issue. Temporarily bypassing the coil resistor made no difference at all. If spark was weak then that would have helped.

I am also convinced that this is not a lifter pump up problem. I adjusted the lifter preload to 0 plus 1/12th turn. Man were they noisy until the engine warmed up. This too made no difference at all.

The only thing left is valve springs. This is where I believe the problem is. Either they are too weak or they are resonating. The pressures are what the cam card calls for, but I believe I need maybe 15% more. I am thinking about 150 on seat and 400 open. Sometime through the Winter I will get a set of bee hive springs and install them for Spring.

See you then.

Dam 150/400 is .630 lift sold good???
slight miss may be junk in the carb. I had one once and pulled the carb and it had a piece of gasket stuck in the one jet! LOL!!
I had the carb apart so I know who is going to get blamed for it???
See you in the spring. check your dizzy for play in the top bushing when I ran MP dizzy's mine would do that every few years one of the big reasons I went MSD for the bearings. I like .004 gape too??

I really hate to bother everyone with yet another question, but…. Since the distributor is many years old I went back and checked side play on the distributor’s shaft by pushing sideways at the rotor. I have the gap set at .008, but I was able to open it up to near .012 by pushing sideways on the shaft. This is only a .004 difference. Does anyone know how critical the gap is?

Dodgem, I am not sure what you were saying in the first line of your reply? (Dam 150/400 is .630 lift sold good???)

hi Chris, I was wondering how it came out. You might tighten the gap to .004" at it's tightest point & recheck. Remember that the vac adv(if used) will change the gap as it moves thru it's travel (got a mityvac or similar) & might be a good move to disconnect it & plug the hose for a check. Stay on it, we'll get it

4.5psi is not enuff fuel preasure. jmo.
also make sure that all 8 points on the reluctor are straight and the same distance
from the pickup. if not, find the one with the greatest difference and file the rest down
to match it.(asuming the bushing is good) that way you have a consistant gap. again, jmo.

I've always been told if you can feel ANY play in the shaft of a distributor, it was bad, and the bushings need replaced (or just a new disty).

It sounds like that's about all you have left that you haven't checked yet.

It’s warm again and I have had time to work on the miss problem. Things didn’t go so well during disassembly. I found stripped bolts on the rocker shaft.
Rocker Shaft Oiling on a Big Block

As far as the miss problem goes, I pretty much decided that it couldn’t be anything but insufficient valve spring pressure. I pulled a couple of springs, measured their installed height and then had the springs checked for seat and open pressures. The seat pressure was only 100 lbs and open they were at 270 lbs. I also found a couple of bent push rods indicating that valve float had been taking place.

Here is a link to the best explanation I have seen about valve float. Thanks to Dodgem for this link.
http://www.cartechbooks.com/vstore/showd...mp;chapter=6226

Believing that this had to be the problem I purchased a set of Comp Cams 930-16 springs. My installed heights vary between 1.873” and 1.902”. This puts the seat pressure at about 160 lbs and the open pressure at about 350 Lbs. Believe it or not it made no difference at all. The engine stills pulls real hard to about 6100 RPM and then falls flat on it’s face like it is hitting a rev limiter. When I started this thread I thought this was happening at a lower RPM but discovered that my tach was off.

I am not sure what else to try at this point. I don’t plan on pushing the thing past 6K or so for shifting, but I also don’t want to be that close to valve float when I do shift.