Have I got a question for you. Have you ever turned your 80s bullnose Ford into a literal ticking time bomb? No, because I have. There I was, cranking the engine for the 40th time, wondering why the hell this Bronco wouldn’t start. I’d been working on this thing for like a month or more, and it just wouldn’t catch and go. Then suddenly, boom, the dipstick flew across the garage. It was like a grenade went off next to my head, and the oil cap flew off and rocketed into the wall. I had to sit there stunned. I can tell you I have never had anything like that happen to me in my life. I hadn’t fixed anything. All I managed to do was turn my crankcase into a bomb. Let’s talk about what actually happened, what caused that, and how I damn near blew up my garage because of a no-start on my Bronco. Hi folks, Ed here. Welcome back to Bono’s Garage. This Bronco that I got, I had a hell of a time getting it started. When I first got it, the guy I bought it from had a little bottle, like a Pepsi bottle, with fuel in it. He put it inside the engine bay, running directly to the fuel pump, which then went to the carburetor, and it would run. He said, ‘Oh yeah, see it runs.’ I had no idea why there was a Pepsi bottle and not going all the way back to the gas tank. I figured maybe there was a fuel filter issue, like an inline filter or a fuel line issue. Maybe the gas tank had some issues. I replaced the gas tank, cleaned it out, and put it back in. After I did that, I tried to start it and nothing. There was fuel pumping. I got fuel out of the fuel pump, so I knew that wasn’t an issue. I verified that I had spark. That wasn’t an issue. Obviously, air wasn’t an issue because you’re just gulping it from the air. I didn’t know what was going on and why it wouldn’t start. I assumed it had to be something to do with the fuel system because I had just worked on it. I worked on this thing every weekend for a month trying to figure out why it wouldn’t start. I checked spark, fuel, ignition timing, and turned the distributor. I changed the spark plug wires and all the spark plugs, even cracked one and had to change it twice. No matter what I did, it would crank and crank. If I was lucky, it would sputter but not continue to go. It got to the point where it wouldn’t even sputter. As part of this process, I noticed my ignition coil was burning really hot. It turns out my ignition coil on these Broncos is generally externally resistant. That means externally on the wire going to the ignition coil there’s resistance, so it doesn’t get a full 12 volts. There’s also a wire from the starter solenoid to the ignition coil for when the starter is engaged to give it a full 12 volts while cranking. That way, you have a better chance of starting. But mine didn’t have that. Someone had replaced the coil and just wired it directly to 12 volts. I burned my hand checking the ignition coil. It was too hot. I thought maybe that’s my problem. I replaced the coil, put in the resistor, ran the starter wire, but it didn’t do it. I got the Bronco backed into the garage. I had to push it in there because I couldn’t drive it. It’s nicer to work in the garage than outside anyway. I put a battery tender on there, changed the battery because it had died from cranking so much. I got everything cleaned out, redid some wiring, and tried to figure out what was going on. Every time I tried to start this truck, I could smell the fuel. I knew it was getting fuel. I even had it pump into a bottle. I knew it was getting spark. I shocked myself on a spark plug trying to check spark. I checked the ignition timing. It was fine. Everything was okay. I didn’t understand what was going on. It wasn’t long before my garage started to smell like a gas tank. Remember back to the beginning of the video, I talked about explosions. You can probably see where this is going. What actually happened was that I had a full-on gasoline explosion in my crankcase as I was cranking the truck.
Trying to get it to start, the carburetor is flooding the engine with fuel, right? My brother-in-law told me it might be my carburetor. Check to see if your float is stuck or if there’s something going on with the jets gathering too much fuel because too much fuel will cause it not to start. I’m not a carburetor guy, so I was hesitant to check that. In the meantime, I kept trying to crank it. Eventually, it dumped too much fuel into the cylinders. The fuel leaked past the rings, got into the oil, and into the crankcase. Every time I tried to crank it, the internals were moving around, mixing the oil with the fuel. A spark hit, and boom, it blew the oil cap off the valve cover and the dipstick across the garage. It was like a grenade going off. Luckily, it was just one bang, and then nothing else happened. I was able to regroup and reassess. It was a full-on detonation. Fuel had flooded the cylinders, leaked down past the rings, got into the oil, and ignited. Gasoline in your oil equals bomb. Aftermath, I checked everything out and, thank God, I didn’t crack the block. I did damage the oil pan gasket and blew a seal around the dipstick. I need to replace the oil pan, which is a several-hour job. But I can drive the truck. My brother-in-law was right; it was the carburetor. Once I got a new carburetor, it fired right up. I’ve driven it around the block a few times. It leaks oil while running, but it’s manageable. I’m not driving it into town, but I can take it around. The only real damage was to the oil pan gasket and the dipstick. If you have gasoline in your oil, change your oil immediately. I did all that, got the new carburetor, and now we’re good to go. I’ve also changed the EGR plate because it was gunky. The only issue is the carburetor I bought has a heat choke, which my Bronco doesn’t have.
That tube does not exist. I’m not sure if someone removed it or what happened there. There’s been a lot of stuff done to this Bronco. Who knows? But that’s not there, so I have no choke. It’s not that big of a deal because I can still start it with some carb cleaner or a little shot of gasoline. It’s not cold around here, so it’s not that big of a deal. Once it runs for a couple of minutes, it’s warm enough that I can just use the key and I don’t have to worry about that. Key takeaways: if your engine smells super rich and won’t start, maybe take that as a hint to not just keep trying until it explodes. Realistically, you can sniff your dipstick, basically smell the oil to see if it smells like gasoline. Gasoline has a very distinctive odor, and if you’ve got gasoline in your oil, that’s an indication that something’s going on and you need to take care of that. You don’t want to make the mistake of turning your crankcase into a bomb. I never thought I’d be one of those guys that builds bombs in my garage, but here we are. That’s a joke, guys. I’m not actually building bombs in my garage, at least not purposefully. It’s just an engine that kind of exploded on me. Long story short, the Bronco’s got nice fresh oil, a carb that I can trust, the ignition coil seems happy now, all the spark plugs are good. It fires up, it runs, I can just let it run, I don’t have to baby it. It runs really well now. As far as the engine is concerned, at some point I will do the oil pan change and rebuild this engine. It’s a 300 inline 6, and I get a lot of guff from people for swapping out my 300 in my F-150 for a Windsor. For the Bronco, I’m going to stick with the 300 but I’m not going to leave it stock. I’ll do some work to it, at the very least a rebuild, and maybe more to give it more torque and horsepower. That engine’s going to get a rebuild. Something did happen internally to that engine, and I will find out when I pull it apart, but for now, it seems to run just fine. I’m not sure yet if I will get around to the oil pan change before I do the engine rebuild. Probably because I’m a long way away from the engine on that truck because I got the Windsor to do first. I don’t want to have multiple engine builds going on at the same time. I may drop the pan and do that, but that’s not really a priority. The F-150 is going to be my priority now that the Bronco runs. For a while, the Bronco was the priority because it couldn’t even run, and my wife was like, ‘You got to move this thing.’ If I want to move it from one place in the yard to the other, unless I wanted to push it, which is a pain, I got to have it running. That was my priority. Got that taken care of, and now it’s just going to be a back burner project, even more so than my F-150. Anyway, getting pretty close to home here. My commute is almost done. If you like this whole disaster scenario or feel sorry for me, give me a thumbs up. I appreciate that. If you have a similar story, any kind of disaster, that would be fun to hear about in the comments. But the fact of the matter is that no matter what, at the end of the day, I learned something and I didn’t die. Really, what more can you ask for? Thanks again so much for watching and we will see you next time. She’s rough around the edges, but she’s doing fine. Thanks again for watching. We will see you next time.
