97 5.7 Vortec won't start??

[jessielifted97]

I started my truck up one day and it ran fine until i got a couple blocks away from my house. I did lay into it a little bit just enough to hear my exhaust and all a sudden it backfired really loud and died. I coasted to a buddys house and it hasnt started since. It was acting like it wasnt getting any fuel but when i put a gauge on it right behind the throttle body it read 65 psi at crank. I went on to look at the distributor cap and the screw on the back side was broken and i could move it up and down. I replaced the cap and epoxy'd the piece that was broken back on and tried to start but its backfiring through the intake. I took the #1 plug out and held my finger over the hole while someone turned it over and it has good compression. maybe i jumped the timing by laying into it? I just dont know what to do.

 

[retorq]

I suspect the distributor has some issues if things needed to be epoxied back on. Timing doesn't just jump on V8s without other major issues.

 

[jessielifted97]

the epoxy was only holding a screw in. nothing internally was epoxy'd

 

[retorq]

Backfiring thru the intake is a timing issue, it's sparking when there is an intake valve open.

 

[jessielifted97]

do you think maybe the timing chain couldve jumped a tooth or a dist. tooth broke or something?

 

[retorq]

No.

 

[_Dylan_]

maybe the distributor gear skipped? how many miles on it?

 

[retorq]

Think about it, it would take over and inch of vertical play in order for the distributor to come up out of the block enough to skip a tooth and set back down. While that is happening that distributor would still need to be sending spark to the cylinders to keep the engine running so that when it set back down it would continue to run ... Those events would simply not happen.

Even shearing off one tooth on the distributor gear won't do that, you would have to shear half of them off, they mesh like the gears in a rear end. It's not a 1 on 1 mesh, it's multiple on multiple.

When you say the cap moved up and down do you literally mean just the cap, like you could rock it back and forth due to the screw being busted, or do you mean the whole distributor assembly moved up and down?? For the while thing to move your hold down clamp or the bolt hold it in would have to be pretty much missing, even if it were loose there wouldn't be enough movement to do what I said in the first part of the post ...