When does a Bronco kick like a mule?

When does a Bronco kick like a mule?
It was in the middle the winter and the coldest day of the year it seems when Pauline came in and told me the truck broke down. Where is it, I asked? It's in the driveway, she said, “it restarted.” So began a long painful journey of troubleshooting. I asked several leading questions; did it miss or stumbled before it stopped, did it lose power or die instantly. After several questions I narrowed it down to a faulty ignition, or a failing fuel pump. We had changed the fuel pump out just a couple years ago, so I didn't believe it had failed again so soon. The first-order business was a complete tune-up.
I changed; the Distributor cap and rotor, the spark plugs and plug wires, even the air filter, fuel filter, and ignition coil. When she took it for a ride it flew down the road smooth as glass. I thought for sure I had it but just a few days later the problem reared its ugly head once again. Now what, I thought, could it be the fuel pump. The fuel pump was at least a couple hundred dollars and there is no return if it didn't fix the problem. I would need a fuel pump pressure gauge to verify whether or not it producing adequate pressure.
This problem persisted but it seemed only when I was in the car. I tried and tried to get it to fail so I could check the ignition and see if it was getting in the spark. I hooked a visual spark tester to the ignition coil while she drove the truck. This went on for weeks and I could not get to fail so I could check the status of the ignition. Soon Pauline discovered if you shifted the truck into neutral it seemed to start consistently. Now I have another avenue to investigate, perhaps it's a faulty neutral safety switch. I soon discovered it doesn't have one it has what's called a range selector and it too was quite expensive. But this problem seem consistent in the range selector had been changed once before so we bought a new one and tried again. Once again the problem was fixed but only for a short time, and now you couldn't shifted into neutral to get it to start again.
Back to the old drawing board. Once again, was the fuel pump, or the ignition module? It seemed to fail when the truck got hot, and the ignition module was equipped with cooling fins, hum? It started to make perfect sense, so I replaced it. It ran better, it didn't break during the usual situations, I finally got it fixed. Before long on another very cold day it broke down once again. Pauline had enough and who could blame her. I had one other ignition part left to change but it required removing the distributor from the engine, and that's no small undertaking. So one fine day in December I grabbed a timing light set to work. I marked the number one cylinder on the distributor and remove the cap, lo and behold it was set perfectly a number one top dead center! That was truly one of the million chance. I pulled the distributor out disassembled it and removed the ignition triggering module. I noticed the wires were distorted as if overheated and some of the insulation was bare. I closely examine the module and found tiny metal strands magnetized to the Hall Effect. I surmised this was shorting out the ignition at random times. I replaced the module, and reassembled and reinstalled the distributor. Now I was sure I had the problem. Pauline drove it for weeks and weeks it was never seen or heard from again.