It's still a ford motor right?

I have an 87 TC that has the 5.0. I replace the coil as it was bad. So I took it out for a drive o see if it had made a difference. I let it run for a while. Made a few stops here in town tossed $20 in the tank and drove 15 miles to the next town and stopped at a traffic light. It ran great. I got moving and noticed I had very little power. Didnt hear anything as I had the stereo cranked. Got moving and killed the tunes and it sounded and acted like it was out of gas.

I got it stopped and it still acted like it was running out of gas. I could get it to start after several tries then it would run then die. It smelled real gassy so I checked spark. That was good. Got it towed home and decided to try the easy stuff. So I replaced the fuel filter.

Took it for a spin. Drove for about 30 minutes and it did the same thing. It acted like it was out of gas. So I drained the tank and the gas looked good. No debris floating around. So I thought about getting a pressure gauge to check fuel pressure but haven't got to that quite yet.

So now to my questions. Do fuel pumps gradually go bad or do they just go kaput? I'm going to look into replacing it anyway but I'm not sure yet. Any ideas as to waht could be causing this issue? I would greatly appreciate the help.

Jeremy

Ok i just remembered one other thing. The is a sensor of some kid attaced to the top of the plenum right where the tube connects from the air filter. Someone told me they thought there was some sensor to clean off that might help. I took this off thinking it was it but all that was there was a metal tab projecting out of the plenum. The sensor was a pain to reattach to this tab. could this be my problem?

 

I would check for a failed fuel regulator. Pull the vacuum line off of the fuel pressure regulator and check for gas in the vacuum line. If there is fuel, then the diaphram is breached and needs replaced. When the diaphram gets breached (fails), you suck excess fuel into the intake causing the engine to spit and sputter due to excess amounts of fuel. This will also cause your gassy smell.

 

I will check that also. I checked the codes and it came up with code 63 throttle position sensor low. I did mess with this before this all happened so hopefully this pricey little component does the trick.

 

A TPS should only be about $25-30. ROCKAUTO.COM carries them for a low as $16.50.

 

Well that kinda helped. I got it to start. It takes longer for it to fire up and it stumbles real bad when I hit the gas with it in park. Any other ideas?? I haven't found the regulator yet. It's not where the book said it should be. I'll keep looking though.