[Ramchargin88]

Hey guys...I have good reason to believe that my distributor bushings are severely worn. I'm chunking out caps/rotors in less than 10k miles and have intermittent bad misses. I'm to the point when something goes wrong on my truck, I upgrade it. I would like to do this with the ignition.

To get it straight: 1988 RC 318, TBI, dual pickup distributor.

What can I do to upgrade this system? A guy at work recommended going to a vacuum advance dist ($36 vs $125 for electronic, but need to buy an Orange box and a bronze drive gear, $25 and $60 respectively). How would this affect the engine computer?

What would my other options be? I've heard of swapping to HEI ignition, but what would be the ups/downs of that?

 

[KThaxton]

If your distributor bushing are going, it could be caused by you distributor drive gear bushing (in the block) going bad.
It can be changed while the engine is in the vehicle, but you need the right tools.
I could give you ignition recomendations if it wasn't TBI, but I'm not sure of the differences, so I better not attempt.

 

[Ramchargin88]

I haven't checked the side play yet, will do that next time I get fed up with the missing enough to replace the cap/rotor. It does all add up though, as about 18 months ago I had problems that were typical symptoms of Hall effect sensor failure...cutting out at idle, hard starting, shutting off slowing down to a light etc...and they mysteriously disappeared. Since the sensors are relatively sensative to the distance between magnet and pickup, any movement could have caused errors in the sensors.

I want to investigate further, I'm just trying to feel out ideas for potential upgrades before something does break and I'm out of a daily driver.