My son's 87 e-150 was stch in ice and snow and he was rocking it forward and reverse when it suddenly lost power and began belching flames from the exhaust system and the wheels quit spinning....we assumed the trans went south but there was no sign of leakage or and mechanical indications of same...I tore into the engine cause we could'nt restart it even with ether...It seems to have spark and fuel but won't start....puzzled...anyone had these symptoms?

 

sounds like the timing chain.

 

I took off the cover and checked static timing and it was right on...not the most obvious culprid...that's why I posted my problem...if it was easy...I could figure it out..

 

If that's not it pull the distributor and make sure the gear didn't shear the pin that hold it on. BTW what engine is in the van?

 

Flames from the exhaust would indicate that there was quite a lot of unburnt fuel in there which caught... unfortuantly, depending on how severe it was, but I reckon your cat converter will be toast now.

Trouble is it could be a whole bunch of different things to make it do that. Sounds like now is the right time to carry out a compression test. You didn't say what engine you have in there.

I'm still a bit puzzled as to why it just died, even if you have burnt out an exhaust valve, it should still run on the other cylinders.
You've checked the timing so can skip a broken or skipped timing chain. It sparks, so the TFI module is probably good.
*scratches head*
I take it you've pulled the plugs to check the condition of them.
If not, there's a good change that you broke up some carbon deposits from the pistons & fouled the plugs. (or valves: have seen it happen before).
Enormous vac leak perhaps?

Does it sound right when you crank it?
Does it fire at all?
Did you pull the codes to see if any are stored?

I'd scribe the distributor so I could put it back to where it was, then retard it as much as you can, get your boy to crank it while you slowly advance it.