Hi guys, I have a 1985 Ford Carryall RV. It has a pretty good exhaust leak. It still ran ran okay, just low compression. It started okay until recently. It hadn’t ran for several months because I was out of the country on a mission trip. I’m a minister. When I returned I figured that I had better let her run a bit. I got her started okay. It was idling and died, now it won’t start. I don’t know much about mechanics, but I desperately need to get it started so I can move it to another spot in my driveway because the city inspector is fussing at me. Where should I start? What tools do I need? I have to get her moved my March 9th so I would greatly appreciate any help.

 

Not sure what this thing looks like, but I am assuming it's like a van? You need to start by taking the aircleaner off, and with the engine off, push the throttle wide open while you look down the carb throat. You should see two strong streams of gas pour into the engine. If not, you have a fuel problem. If you squirt a little fuel manually into the carb throat, it should cough and think about starting. If this turns out to be true, we can pursue what to check next.

 

You hit the nail on the head. It’s a 26 foot RV with a van cab up front. I will definitely give that a shot this evening and get back to you with an update. Thank you so much for the help, Franklin!

 

Did it run out of gas?

 

My truck did that to me once, died two block from the house. Was stranded for a bit, but got it to start back and ended up replacing the ignition switch. Right after that I had a bunch of dirt hauled in and dropped around back. I was using the truck to haul some around front to build up next to the drive. Dumped and spread a load, went to go back for another and truck died partway in the street. Had to call my father in law to come over and help me push it the rest of the way back into the drive. It was Halloween and the truck was blocking the drive and the sidewalk and the kids were just starting to come out. It sat in the drive for a week or two before I put some gas in it. I spent most of that time trying to diagnose another failed part and never even considered it was out of fuel because it's such a simple thing. Right after that is when I pulled the bed to fix the sender and tripped and fell into my frame up misadventures. All this trouble because I ran out of gas. lol I'm still mildly embarrassed about it.

 

Econoline E350 "Cut-Away" with Class C Motor Home body.

Cut-Away: Ford cut the cargo van body off behind the front seats so that box van, ambulance, Class C motor home and people mover bodies could be installed.

 

First ensure your battery is charged up to at least 12.7 volts (verified with multi or volt meter). Use a little blue rubber bulb they sell at stores to suck snot out of babies nostrils. They'll be in the baby area of the store (with the foods and diapers and stuff). Remove air cleaner, use the rubber bulb to squirt fresh gas into the carburetor vent tubes to "fill up the bowls". While there, operate throttle by hand as already instructed and make sure those filled bowls are actually squirting 2 streams of fuel into engine. If you have 12.7 volts, carb bowls filled with fuel, that does squirt when throttle is activated, it should immediately fire off.
What happens MOST of the time, if one sits awhile, the fuel takes quite awhile to refill lines and carb and you'll drop battery voltage or fry the starter solenoid trying to crank it. try to achieve 12.7 volts on your battery and measured, don't figure it's "good enough". And, no 12 volts isn't enough to crank a 12 volt system, you'd like battery to be well above 12.5 to crank. You can also buy a $5 or less spark tester (any car parts store or harbor freight tools) to put inline between your spark plug and plug wire to visually see if you have spark when trying to crank. If your spark isn't blue, it's not hot enough, you're too low on volts. you don't want lazy fat orange flame but rather strong bluish white.