[blykins]

I've been sitting thinking about this....wanted to see your all's opinions....

I've doing a lot of tinkering with the carb lately.....and I figured out that my alternator wouldn't charge with the engine idling because of the underdrive pulleys.

Anyway, I put a fuel pressure regulator on, fired it up, and the thing was harder to start than usual and it seemed like it had a miss to it.

I noticed that when I was blipping the throttle trying to get it to warm up that I could hear the fuel pump getting louder and the ignition indicator light would get brighter....that's what tuned me on to the alternator and battery.

I stuck one of those chargers on the battery that tells you what percentage the battery is at....it showed 58%. I proceeded to go ahead and charge the battery....it took about 5 minutes to charge to 100%.

I pulled a plug out of each cylinder bank and looked at it. Sure enough, they were sooty and a little gassy.

My thought is that the low battery voltage has caused all of this....not a full charge....so my MSD 6AL couldn't get a good spark off to each cylinder....which caused the soot, gassiness, and the missing.

After the battery was charged, it started quicker and seemed to run smoother, but still had a very slight miss in it. (As detected by the seat-of-the-pants meter.) I would chalk that up to the plugs being sooty.....

So does this sound like a logical explanation to my dilemma?

Again, I only get to work on the car usually on the weekends....I live 2.5 hours away from the car.....so if something isn't quite right, I have to lay awake thinking about what all could be wrong at night....

Next plan of action is to go ahead and swap the plugs out for some new ones....make sure the battery is at 100% and fire it up.....

Signed,

Worried in Louisville