Thursday night my 2000 durango 5.2 ran and drove just fine coming home from work. went to start it friday morning and it would not start. checked and it was getting spark to all cylinders, smelled fuel in exhuast but wouldnt run, just crank over.

this morning still same thing. so i pulled all the plugs and pulled fuel pump relay and cranked it over a minute or two to blast out any built up fuel and then replaced everything and tried starting it again. it seemed to have fired once or twice and then back to square one. pulled plugs again to let it sit all day to air out.

came home from work today and put plugs back in but left fuel pump relay out and sprayed ether into intake and tried starting and it ran, rough for a few seconds continued spray and it picked up and then back fired out of the throttle body (and took off some of my hair....). but fuel pump relay back in and turned key to on position to prime the line and it went to about 50 psi (used old r12 low side pressure guage and it fit) and actually got it to run, miraculasly. but then after a few seconds it started to have a random miss. when i raise rpms above idle it would end up firing out of the exhuast and bog down.

on a side not when i had all the plugs out i put the dist rotor to cyl #1 and the timing mark on the crank was about 3 marks before TDC. i know the vehicle has almost 200k on it and dunno if timing chain has ever been done.


but my question is what is most likely wrong and what is the cheapest way to get it back running like the champ it ran like on thursday night?

 

Do a tune up, cap, rotor, plugs (champion copper), plug wires.