*N00b* Car Won’t Start Options

[brianp626]

Hi all, new here needing a little help. Let me give you a quick backstory. Picked this car up on Friday. It’s a 73 1.7. Against my better judgement I decided to drive the car home, it started up fine, ran fine. 30 minutes into my commute it’s smoking BAD. Have it towed home. After looking around for a problem I noticed it was missing a hose from the flashback valve (?) to the passenger side head and was pretty oily in that area so assumed it was spitting oil on top of the engine hence the smoke. Replaced the hose. Went to fire it up and it won’t start. Engine oil level seems fine so it didn’t lose much. Any ideas why this would start fine before the incident and now it won’t? Thanks for the help in advance.

[Dave_Darling]

The engine needs three things to run: Fuel, air, and spark. Do you smell fuel at the tailpipe after trying to start the engine for a bit? Tape an extra spark plug so the threaded part is touching a ground and hook it to a plug wire. Do you see sparks when you crank the starter?

Checking the compression requires a compression tester, so assume that it is OK for the moment....

Inspect all wires and hoses in the engine bay. Are they hooked up? Solidly? Anything broken?

Sudden no-start problems are often electrical problems. It's not that hard to knock a wire loose... Sometimes a connection comes loose but still looks OK from the outside, so sometimes you have to wiggle the plug or the wire a little.

--DD