MWJones159

I switched out my plugs, wires, cap and rotor, and everything seemed to go fine, but I've noticed when I let off the gas, especially under heavy acceleration going up hills (I live in NC Mountains), it seems to hiccup or something of that sort. It starts to compression brake, has a short burst of air intake, then resumes compression braking. I think this is a vacuum leak but I don't know where it should start. wondering if maybe there is a common problem when you take the air box off (easier to access cylinders 5 & 6). there's only a few back there that I made sure were connected...maybe an improperly gapped plug?

I have an 89 pathy and my tach and temp gauge both are intermittent at best. -My tach will work but only when its freezing cold out, for instance below 20 F roughly. But any warmer than that it's lifeless until red line. Basically my question with this is after checking and cleaning all the connections on the back of the cluster as well as redoing the connection to the distributor, what else can I try to bring it back to life? - My temp gauge is another oddball occurrence. it will go through spouts of working properly and not working at all. I checked the coolant one day in the radiator and noticed it was low, so I added some and put a new cap on since the gasket was pretty clucked up. this made it work well for a month or so but then it reverted back to usually only working on the interstate and only popping up once or twice in a 200 mi journey. My question with this is would it be something like a coolant flush and possibly thermostat replacement to fix this or could it be as simple as the coolant temp. sensor? Side note: Timing job was done at 114xxx and I'm pushing 196xxx. I've heard of potentially cataclysmic events occurring if these services aren't done on time? how much truth is behind that statement?