1987 chevrolet R10 half ton ignition problem

[bph320]

I have a 1987 R10(Injected) half ton pickup that I have been restoring. I took it to a paint shop to get the exterior and interior painted. I had them remove the old dashed and install a new one in its place. When I went to pick the truck up they said they couldn't get it to start and they thought it was out of gas. It wasn't out of gas. when cranking the engine we couldn't get it to even fire. we took the air cleaner off and could see that fuel was going into the throttle body. There was fuel being sprayed into the throttle body. we took a spark plug wire off and grounded it to ground it and confirmed there was in fact spark. I trailered it there so we just pushed it up onto the trailer to bring it home. Someone mentioned they may have disconnected something with the ignition system. any ideas?

[muddkatt]

If you are getting fuel and spark, it should start unless there are internal mechanical issues.

[ifixedit]

Yep, if you've got spark and fuel it should run. Did anyone by chance either disturb the timing by moving the distributor or possibly mess with the plug wires and install them on the wrong cylinders?

[bph320]

All they did was remove the dashboard cover when painting the interior. It seems totally strange it won't even fire up with spark and fuel.

[ifixedit]

Well, the only other guess I've got is what you saw coming out of the TB injector wasn't gas. Maybe you have some water in the tank? Again as mentioned above by muddkatt, it doesn't make any sense that it wouldn't run if it is getting both fuel and spark. Try squirting a shot of gas directly into the TB, then crank and see if it does anything. If it doesn't fire then I'd say there's some kind of intermittent disruption in the ignition.

[muddkatt]

^^ X2

 

Let me add that you can shoot some starting fluid to see if it will at least try to fire up.

 

Only other thought I have is maybe when they pulled the dash, they caused an issue with either the ignition switch, or the harness that runs down the column. Removing the dash pad requires pulling the instrument cluster face plate, so maybe they bumped something.