Help with '93 4x4

[01z71]

A buddy of mine is having trouble with his truck.  It has the 350 V-8 with the throttle body.  His truck when he tries to start it will shoot a flames up out of the Air Cleaner (TBI).

 

When the truck does run it has a lot of black smoke coming out of the tail pipe.

 

Any ideas what could be causing this?  He's got fairly new plugs and stuff on there.

[01z71]

We just got it started.  The engine is making a hissing noise when not pressing the accelerator.  The noise seems to be coming from where the injectors are.  The engine when smoking is a blackish grey.

[bassdog]

The timing sounds like it needs to be adjusted. Flames should not be shooting thru....try that first.

 

Black smoke could be a number of things, bad cat., carbon build-up, timing is off, etc.

 

The hissing at the injectors is just the air being sucked in to the carb.