The engine turns over, but that’s all it does. Pulling the air filter of shows no indication of gasoline in the carburetor, and removing the outgoing pipe from the fuel pump and cranking it proves that the fuel pump is bad. A few years ago, we had to replace the fuel pump in our -94 Oldsmobile. The pump itself was, if I remember correctly, over $200, and replacing it required dropping the exhaust system, taking the fuel tank out and putting the pump in from the top. It took myself and my father-in-law a good four-to six hours. On the Mustang, the pump was $21.95, and it took all of 15 minutes to replace it. This made me happy. Fuel is now going to the carburetor, and leaking all over, but there is still no ignition.

The old standby of spraying starting gas into the carburetor, to bypass any clogs in the system, and taking out the option of the gas being bad, makes for no improvement, so I feel it’s safe to assume that there’s no good spark. Pulling a plug appears to prove this, so I will start replacing ignition parts. First up rotor, points and condenser, as they’re the cheapest parts and easiest to install. Something I thought was neat is that the box that the points arrive in, is the same thickness as the correct points gap. These three in place, however, made no improvement, so I also added a new coil and suddenly I had backfiring in the exhaust. Excitement!

Turning the distributor around and cranking again made for more backfiring in the exhaust, and one backfire into the carburetor, which was unfortunate, as the engine was covered in gasoline, which promptly caught fire. A quick hit with the fire extinguisher took care of that, and increased the need for cleaning the engine a little, but not much.

New rule: No further cranking of the engine until the fire extinguisher has been replaced.
Until that is done, I’ll focus on the carburetor, and preventing it from leaking gasoline all over the engine.