Okay this is my Fathers van and I will give a brief history of the problem we are having. It is a 1994 E350 with the 5.8L motor. He bought it about 3 years ago, had no reverse, he got a reman trans put in it and then the problems started ever since then with it starting. Seems as it would never, start right up after sitting for awhile. It would crank and crank and then finally fire up. So, within the last month, he finally got tired of it, so I started helping him try and tackle the problem. First, the starter solenoid just sounded extremely bad, so we replaced the starter, still not starting. We replaced the plugs, all the plug wires, the distributor cap and the rotor. Still will not start. Seems like when we are trying to start it, sometimes it sounds like it wants to fire, then sometimes, just sounds like it has no spark at all, but it does. I have checked the spark coming out of the coil, its pretty strong. Checked all the wires out of the cap, all have spark to the spark plugs. I cleaned out the IAC and still nothing. I know we are getting fuel, not only can you smell it, but I pulled the plugs and they were soaked in fuel. I was curious if anyone out here can point us in the another direction, haha. I did get it to fire up last week once, and it sounded like it was running on about 3 cylinders. It was smoking out of the tail pipe, and we even got a flame out of the Throttle body So, can anyone help us with some advice on what we did wrong, or give me some advice on something to check or anything? He really needs this van to run!!!

 

I'm no expert, but it sounds like it could be the timing belt.