Trying to fire the Cougar, Ended in getting Fire in the Engine...

January 27, 2012, 09:06:26 PM

Hi all.

My cougar sat in the driveaway the last 6 years. It have the 3.8 V6 and the C3 tranny. Not very often i try to start it, running a few minutes and forget the car for another months/years. I moved 3 years ago to another town, so the car is in mom´s home, so its very dificult to me to get some attention for the car.

Well, yesterday, i went to moms house and saw the car. I remembered which things went wrong the last time, so, with nothing to do, i picked my tools and tryed to start it.

No luck yesterday, for some reason i had no spark. Well, i left right there.

Today i figured the problem with the spark (needed a Duraspark module, i had one laying around) and finally the car got some signs of life. But i discovered that the carb had a bad gasket (a vacuum problem)

Went to Autohole and bought spark plugs, wires, oil, carb cleaner and some fuel in the gas station. Changed it. The car started like 10 seconds. But backfired. I had a small gas leak and started a fire. The car was off. Too bad for me, my fire extinguisher was in the other truck, so the first i thought was to get some sand, which was very close to the place i was working. BUT a "good neighbor" came with a bucket full of water and yes, you are right, the hell came loose.

I ended with a car full of sand and WATER trough the intake. Nothing got burned. Well, i "thanked" my neighbor" and continue working.

The car was off went the fire started, so i though that i havent hidrolocked the engine. I cleaned the entire area (took me like and hour or so...) , cut the fuel supply, removed the carburetor, removed all the spark plugs and watched the intake manifold. Well, it had not very much sand, very little, but it had a lot of water.

With the engine in that way, i turned the engine with the starter like 20 seconds (three times, with 5 minutes at every attemp), some water got trough the spark plug holes. Put some fuel to try to clean the intake ports and repeated the operation two more times.

Just to make sure, i decided to remove the intake manifold and clean completely. No sand came from it, and i cleaned with the carb cleaner inside and out. I left like two hours and reinstalled it.

I havent see nothing wrong in the engine block, i saw the lifters moving normally (with the intake out) and no strange noises.Cleaned everything But i know that this is not a reliable method to describe what happened really to the motor. Turned the engine with the intake out and nothing more came from the ports. Added some more fuel to the ports and repeated again. Just wanted to make sure that all the water came out.

I am not going to try to start the car after this. Im going to wait some weeks or months to try again. I know im going to need new gaskets for the intake manifold

My question is.....Did i ruined my engine? i have never been trough this situation, i just did what i thought was correct. I know that i need to change my oil very soon. But what more i can do? Did something like this happened to you?

Thanks in advance.

Trying to fire the Cougar, Ended in getting Fire in the Engine...

Reply #1 – January 28, 2012, 03:49:00 PM

Sand and water in your engine is never a good thing, but I doubt the engine is ruined since you pulled the plugs and turned it over to get it out.