Hello all. I own a 1995 Chevy K1500 pickup truck. About a year ago, my idiot light would come on every now and again, but if I revved the engine it disappeared. I thought nothing of this since the truck was running fine. About 6 months ago, I started having trouble getting the truck to start (this problem was fixed with a new starter), followed quickly by the truck wanting to stall out rather than run at idle when first trying to start it in the morning.
After a couple of days of this, the truck would act worse if I brought it up to full opperating temperature, ran an errand, turned the engine off, and tried to restart it after a few minutes (while the engine was still warm). Once I finally would get the truck started, I had a heck of a time getting it into gear without it stalling. By now, my idiot light stayed on all of the time, with a code reading as a short in the ECT Sensor. I replaced the ECT Sensor, followed by the spark plugs, plug wires, ignition module (broke it while fooling with the distributor cap), ECT wiring harness, and re-timed the engine from running at 20 degrees before TDC ( I have no idea how it got that far advanced) back to 0 degrees at full operating temperature idle.
The truck ran fine at full operating temperature, but it still tries to stall at first ignition. I have to let the truck idle at 2000 rpm’s just so that it keeps enough juice to keep it from stalling. I hooked up my timing light after start up to see what the timing was doing during these stalling periods, and at cold start it idles at around 5 degrees before TDC, but when it wants to stall it drops to somewhere around 10-15 degrees below TDC. The idiot light tends to shut off while the engine is idling, but it turns right back on when it tries to stall. Now, on occasion, it acts as if it is going to die after it is warmed up and driving down the street.
Am I having electrical problems since the ECT and throttle sensor share a wire? Possibly a short sending a bad signal to the throttle sensor? Or is this a case where I need to replace the fuel pump and filter? Or is it something else entirely?
Thank you in advance for any help and suggestions that you may have to offer.