A friend of mine owns a 1985 F-150 4x4 302 and was idling to warm up in cold weather. He got in and put the truck into reverse and he says the truck moved in a strange manner and the engine died, never to start again.
I drove into town and looked at the engine. There is no spark. The ignition coil is getting 12 VDC. He bought a new coil and it did not help.
Cap,wires rotor are fine.
No idea where to look further.

 

At this point I would check the timing chain. Turn the engine to aline the rotor to the #1 spot on the cap then check if the marks on the balancer line up with the timing pointer. If it checks out and the marks line up then start checking electrical and fuel supply.

 

The truck has 25K original miles on it. Was in storage for a long time. I will check timing.
There is no spark though. Cap,rotor,wires,plugs all OK.
Fuel rail is under pressure.
How do you check the ignition control module?

 

With a test light check if the fuel injectors are getting a signal while the engine is cranking. It may just be a matter of a bad electrical connection from being in storage. Try to get a OBD 1 scanner which may help pin point the source of the problem.

 

Something I just remembered, on the side of the distributor known as a Thick Film Module. It is easy to change but a special small tool is needed to remove the small screws. The way you described the way the engine stopped reminded of the way my son’s engine stopped

 

I hand made two test lights with needle probes. An LED test lamp and an incandescent bulb one as well.
I went to the link for trouble shooting the lack of spark and found that all test passed except that the PIP test showed that the pulses were in fact going to the distributor but nothing was happening. The ignition control module was bad. Upon further investigation I found the horse shoe magnet in the housing was cracked in several places.
Pulling the distributor out of the block was a challenge and took over an hour as there were several engine parts in the way and the distributor was well frozen in place from age.
As it turned out the repair parts were as expensive as a rebuilt Motorcraft distributor with a three year national warranty from Napa. All American made parts. Also picked a new cap and rotor.
I will install the new distributor in the AM and hope all is well.
I have never replaced a distributor in a Ford 302 engine so I'm hoping it will go well.
The timing mark is on Zero and I marked the distributor for rotor and location to match the removed one.
I need to read up on how to set the timing for the 6000 feet elevation here and which way to turn the distributor for advance/retard for the best burn.

 

Did you read about taking the spout connector out to set the timing?

 

Is this it?

 

If one of those wires on that connector go directly to the distributor module, yes that is it.

 

I spent 8 hours today reinstalling the distributor and setting the timing at ZERO and 10 Degrees BTDC. There is now a nice BLUE spark at the plugs and the timing light triggers for plug 1 at zero or 10 depending where I have it set to.
The engine backfired ONCE after one second of cranking and no more. I removed the above plug as told/listed with no difference.
We can smell gas as it cranks over. It will not fire on starting fluid.
I did find three broken vacuum lines at the very large vacuum tank/housing going to several relays that do what? They are not shown or listed in the Chilton service manual.
One line Pink, goes to the MAP? valve one the right fender well.
At this point I'm stumped. I have spark at the plugs, timing is set to either ZERO or 10 BTDC and air is not restricted. We bought a new 850 CCA Interstate battery as well.


Yes, the vacuum connector is apart. I'll have to buy new vacuum lines and rubber hose as I can find NO parts listed anywhere on line.
I'm open to all ideas at this point that are helpful, thanks.

 

I would pull a sparkplug or two and check them. If they are very wet with fuel, they may be fouled out. They won't fire like that. You can pull them and clean then off with brakecleaner and then re-install them, that usually works for me. If you do a lot of cranking and you think it's getting flooded again, you can hold the gas pedal to the floor while cranking, this will turn the injectors off.

How does it crank over? Smooth and evenly with a steady rhythm? Or does it speed up and slow down as it cranks over?

 

I hate to be this guy, but you should pull the error codes and post them

 

A ford mechanic for 45 years called me very much aware of the probable cause of the no start.
IF the main power plug of the ECU on the drivers fender well is BLUE and not Black there is every chance the ECU has failed. They can recover in a few days, but replace it with a later version that is fed by a Black plug.
I was informed that the Blue plug version fails are so common that he, the mechanic, carries a spare one in the glove box.
We will check what version is in the truck in the AM.
At this point we need to try anything to get this truck running.

 

Is this motor EFI or been swapped to a carb?
Being you posted MAP I am thinking EFI.
If that is the case you would not have a ICM on the left fender well, black, blue or other wise.

If you have EFI the ICM is located in the distributor.
It's the gray thing with all the wires to it.
It also goes by TFI and can go bad but I am guessing the new distributorcame with one.

The ECM computer controls the EFI side of things and is inside the cab.

You know the timing mark will come up 2 times.
1 at TDC the other 180° off and why you may of had the back fire. You need to check you are on the compression stroke of TDC before setting the distributor in the motor.
Dave ----

 

The engine is EFI.
The rotor was set up by the timing marks and verifying the rotor was pointing at spark plug number 1.
I used a timing light as the engine was cranked on the #1 spark plug and the light fired on the timing marks..
Taking the valve cover off is not an option.
I did not do the "thumb-test " over the plug hole.