I've decided that setting timing by ear is over my head. Gotta find a mechanic...
Anyway... When I drove the Trooper home from an hour and a half away, on the freeway, and going about 70ish up a small hill, the engine kind of coughed a few times. Like, it lost power and the rpms went kinda funny, but not a backfire. There wasn't a noise associated... Anyway, the guy said the timing was off, and it migth do that, so I wasn't too worried. I replaced the plugs, wires, cap, and rotor 'cause it was missing elsewhere in the rev range.
So, do you all think the "coughing" is a timing thing, a cap/rotor thing, or am I fucked (again)? It seems to me that it could be a timing thing... But my confidence in my own analyses has been reduced of late.
It could be lots of things, but you can't confirm timing till you check it with a light.
Which I can't do because the distributor is off a little.
I don't think that your incident was ignition timing related if the car ran fine (or closer to it) on the other half of your trip.
Have u hooked a vacuum guage up to it at all?
I want to say EGR problem because of the power loss, but thats grasping at straws given what we know so far.
Naw, it ran the same the whole way. There were multiple small hills, or other times I was full on the throttle. It didn't happen every time I went up a small hill or was aggressively accelerating, though.