302 Shutting off issue

I was gifted a 1986 F150 for my birthday a few months back, it’s a 5.0 EFI with 68K (or 168K I don’t know for sure) on it. I’m having a real bothersome issue of this thing shutting off after a few minutes of operation, wether it be idling or driving it will lose power and die.

It’s progressively gotten worse, before it would happen once every few days now it happens multiple times a day to where I can’t even drive it. It’s happening so fast now the temp gauge isn’t reaching operating temp before the engine shuts off and I’m stuck waiting to start it back up.

It if helps at all the Emissions light comes on as it dies, but it doesn’t come on any other time during operation. This thing is much older than me so I’m not too sure what to look for since there’s not much of an OBD system is any at all. Any help is greatly appreciated.


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Welll 3 things you'll want to do is #1, do a fuel pressure test, your fuel pump might be going out, #2 run a diagnostic codes check with a scanner. And #3 when the truck dies pull one of the spark plug wires and check for spark right as soon as it dies. An extra sparkplug grounded against the block will do or better still a spark tester, available any tool or parts store. Report your findings. An easy way to know if it's fuel vs spark is remove the air horn that goes to throttle body, open throttle, spray a 2-3 second spray of starter fluid or carb cleaner. If it fires then dies you know it's fuel related.

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How do I run a diagnostic code check on this truck? I’m not sure how to work anything pre-OBDII


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The plugs are up near battery, at least they were on my Lincoln's, and Mustangs. You use a Eec4 code checker. If you don't want to mess with it, have a shop or parts store run your codes for you.

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