Turns out it was the #3 spark plug wire. The shaft was completely spiderwebbed. Like it was shattered. No wonder it was running so rough, i was only running on 5 cylender's!! BTW, I did clean the whole upper intake manifold and the Throttle Body (dremel'd down the screws on that baby too) and it was just sick. I mean the carbon was CAKED on there, a good 1/8" thick easy. The EGR ports where completely clogged! I cleaned that out and the car ran a little smoother, gas mileage went through the roof (extra 50 miles to a tank, still a little lower than the normal 280-300, but better than the 219 i was getting!), even though it still ran rough (problem was the wires). So I found the problem when I was putting in some new Bosch +4's.
I had put in motorcraft OEM replacments at around 60k, but I figured it must have been a bad plug for it to run so rough. And the rough running was sporatic too - every now and then it would run smooth, but then it would get rough again, usually after the engine warmed up. I guess I should've just changed the wires at 60k with the plugs!
BTW, using a metal polish made that throttle body just shine!! smoothed out the scratches from the sanding too. I was sad to cover it back up when I reinstalled it back on the intake manifold!
