Car wont idle or run.

[samg40]

Bit of a strange one this, bare with me on this it might get a bit long. I was coming home from work everything fine, car has been running brilliantly. Gave it full throttle in third going up a steep hill and the engine backed off quite severly. Throttle off and the car seemed fine. Went over the hill and down the other side, pull up to a stop at the bottom and the car cuts out. I restart it after a few tries and it is firing on anything other than four cylinders, wont idle and has no power what so ever. I manage to limp it the 1/4 of a mile home. It was backfiring and spluttering all over the place. I have since let it cool down and tried to start it and it wont tick over, it just struggles to tick over throttle or not and then dies. I've checked all the spark plugs which all seem fine apart from number two which has a bit of oil in the threads of it but I suspect that is from when the oil sender directly above it was leaking slightly. There is no oil out of the exhaust or smoke that I noticed and the water seems ok. The engine was smoking from around the back of the block but the breather was still in position.

Spoke to Andy earlier and he seemed to think it was a fuel issue, probably inline pump related, in case you read this Andy, when I turn the ignition on it still primes and makes the same noise as usual, but I dunno whether it would do even if knackered. Anyone any thoughts? I think my first port of call will be to try another fuel pump.

[cheys03]

As I was reading it my thoughts went to fuel delivery too, though it'd have to be quite severe to not idle. Rule it out with something like easy start into the throttle body?
As it got bad at high load...not skipped a tooth on the cambelt has it?

[scotsjohn]

Fuel pressure regulator maybe? IIRC PeteG40 had something along these lines some time back.

[grayg40]

i had a problem like this last year and it turned out to be a head gasket blown across the cylinders rather than into a water or oil port.

[samg40]

I hope it isnt that, I only did the head gasket and had the head rebuilt a couple of months ago. I am wondering if it has skipped a tooth somehow. More investigation on Saturday will hopefully reveal all.

[grayg40]

i had done a rebuild a couple months before my gasket went pop.

[samg40]

Bloody coils! It must have just been providing some sort of spark but obviously not a good one. Oh well cheap and easy fix I suppose.

[cheys03]

Yay!
Bizzare.