Just had an '84 d150 dropped off the other day, and can't get it to start. It hasn't ran since summer, but turns over good. It has a 360/auto. I swapped out the two bbl Holley with one I had that was rebuilt, and get good squirts when I hit the throttle. I changed the ballast with a known good one, as well as the coil, cap/rotor, and ignition module. I got spark now, but still no start. It's not even trying. If I crank it over with the throttle open, I can hear faint popping sounds through the carb, no backfiring (in the loud firey sence), just a very quiet popping. I'm not so good with ignition, but it seems the timing is off. The distributor looks as if it hasn't moved in 20 yrs, so maybe the timing chain jumped?

 

Ok, I splashed a bit of fuel down the carb to see how it'd react, and it did stumble a bit, but still nothing. I'm rebuilding the carb that was on it, and I'll play with the timing. Hopefully I'll stumble onto the right mix to get it going. I just need to get it off the street and into the garage. The previous owner used it as a farm truck up until last summer when it quit, he figured a fuel problem, but didn't bother to spend much time figuring it out.

 

Ok, got it going with a ton testing/cleaning/fixing. One thing that confuses me is the sheer amount of gas that was in the crank case. Since the truck is destined for parts, I never bothered to check the oil when I got it. While waiting for the engine to dry out after flooding it, I pulled the dipstick just to see. It was full a good 5" over the full line and stank of gas. I drained out probably 10L of oil/gas (for those of you in the US, that's about equal parts oil and gas)! After refilling with oil, it cranked over much better and after cleaning the fouled plugs, it fired up and ran well. The truck has been parked since early fall, and the po never really tried to get it going. How could so much gas get into the oil? I tested compression on two cylinders (3 and 7, it was -25c at the time and windy!), they're 125 and 130. Once the weather smartens up I'll do a proper test, but I can't believe that bad rings or a warped head/blown gasket would leak that much. Could the fuel pump fail and leak gas past the arm into the timing chain cover? I did replace the pump with a good one off my '83 to get it going. Odd business.....

 

Bad fuel pump can get gas in the oil sometimes.

 

Yes had this happen on my sisters Malibu, bad diaphragm filled crank case with gas.

Dave

 

That's what I figured, couldn't think of anything else that would do that. I did finally get it going and squeezed into the garage. I had to retard the timing a rediculous amount to get it to run. But she's in. And will probably sit for a while till I figure out wether to part it out or not.