399,000 mile festiva no spark

[neanderpaul]

My buddy is driving an 91 L 5 speed efi festiva with 399,000 miles on it. He was driving it, stopped, and it was hard to start. A couple of extra cranks to start but it fired. He drove it 30 miles stopped and it would crank but not fire. It's not the fusible link. It backfired on him when cranking. He replaced the engine and trans at 360,000 miles with a set from a 46,000 mile car. Car has original everything else. Suggestions to try? This is buck zeppelin who came to ohiostiva. Tall and about 55 years old. Looks a little like Kramer from seinfeld. :lol:
thanks in advance

[milehighbear]

would being out of time or timing belt slip cause a backfire. It use to on a few of my cars and hard starting would also be a cause of this. Just my thinking.

[FestYboy]

yeah, go after your timing belt, it's easy to replace even on the side of the road.

[skeeters_keeper]

no spark coming from the coil? or from the dizzy? If you have spark to the dizzy but not @ the plugs I'd suspect a dizzy (perhaps rotor/button) problem.

[sanjeet]

Wow that's amazing getting 400,000miles on the engine, it sounds like a timing issue, or what we call in Aotearoa (NZ) deiseling and it can be caused by carbon building up on the piston crowns, maybe the engine needs a good hard run.

I thought mine was doing well on 250,000 kilometres (we sacked the imperial system here in the 1980's) 30MPH = 50KPH

[neanderpaul]

It was the coil. It's up and running.

[neanderpaul]

Wow that's amazing getting 400,000miles on the engine, it sounds like a timing issue, or what we call in Aotearoa (NZ) deiseling and it can be caused by carbon building up on the piston crowns, maybe the engine needs a good hard run.

I thought mine was doing well on 250,000 kilometres (we sacked the imperial system here in the 1980's) 30MPH = 50KPH

Sanjeet if you look in the original post it says the running engine and trans were pulled at 360,000 miles. 300,000 is common on these first gen festivas. I've seen 7 with over 500,000.