A little background info is in order-- I bought this car about 2 months ago from a guy for $500 bucks. It's silver and the body is in great shape. However, whoever owned the car before him pulled all the fuel injection system out of the car and custom mounted a Motorcraft single barrel carb on the original intake manifold. Why? Damned if I know. Because of the custom mount, the carb sits so high that there's no room for an air filter.

Anyway, car was running fine and I was doing a bunch of little repairs. I plan to put a new Weber conversion kit on the car soon to replace the Motorcraft (which supplies the car with WAY too rich a mixture as I think it is from an early eighties ford ranger). The car stopped running recently and I'll be damned if I can't get it started.

When I turn the ignition, the engine turns over. If I give it any gas at all, the carburetor spits back and sometimes shoots flames. Just to be sure the electrical was ok (I was fairly sure, since it's spitting flames) I pulled the plug wires and had someone crank the engine so I could see if they'd arc. They did. One shocked the **** out of me.

The spark plugs I replaced are already covered in carbon. I cleaned them and re-installed them and nothing changed. The carburetor seems to be operating as usual, but I pulled it off and dissassembled it. Accellerator pump works ok, jet sprays, float is working and was full. The fuel pump is working. I mean, I guess all of that should be obvious-- apparently the accellerator pump is flooding the intake manifold and the plugs are igniting the fuel.

*Should I be worried about cylinder compression? I don't have a pressure checker.
*Could this be a timing problem? Should I see if the timing belt broke?
*Any other suggestions?

 

check your belt and your timing . did it just die on you or did it slowly die no mater how much fuel you gave it?