I drove my car over 200 miles last weekend to the Carlisle swap meet to purchase window parts from Bairs for my passenger side window. Bairs are the greatest good service and help, very friendly and helpful. So a few days later was going to take the car out for a ride. The car would not start? Ran perfectly a few days earlier. I thought I flooded it maybe too many pumps of the throttle but usually no problem. It seemed like it turned over good and tried to start like it only fired on the prime? So I let it sit and tried later and the same , a little start a pop but would not run. Took the intake cover off and the carb seemed to be full of fuel. Turned it over again and smoke out of the carb butterfly's when I opened them, and puff of smoke out the exhaust. Turned it over with someone watching the carb and he saw flames light and then smoke came out the top? Ok obviously I am no mechanic but how is smoke combustion getting to the carb, this should be fuel and air and the spark fire combustion in the piston and manifold section. Stopped there as afraid of a fire? I am open to suggestions? Never had a problem starting before and it ran beautiful over and back to Carlise? Bb78

If it's flooded, you can get some pops/farts out the intake. Take a couple of the sparkle plugs out and see if they are wet. If they are, you can disconnect the red(pink, if faded) wire from the distributor cap, hold the throttle wide open, and crank if for a few seconds at a time, several times. If you have an air compressor, you can also hold the throttle open and blow air down the intake for a minute or so...this will usually dry it out enough to start.
Then plug the wire back in, put the air cleaner back on, hold the throttle open, crank it, and see if it will start. If it will not, it's possible that the ignition module has given up the ghost, or the coil had gotten too weak to fully fire the plugs.
Chances are, it's just flooded. If the plugs get too wet without firing, they may not fire very well, even after it does start, so you may need to replace them.

Another thought is possibly the timing chain has jumped. This could happen pretty much any time, if the chain is worn/stretched, or if it has the cheesy nylon toothed upper gear, and the nylon has worn/broken off of the gear. It could run just fine, and then when the engine is shut off, it jumps a couple of teeth....I've had that happen more than once on those silly nylon-covered aluminuminum timing gears.
Toc heck for this, you would need to get the #1 piston up to top dead center(tdc) on the compression stroke, with the timing mark lined up on the balancer. Then remove the distributor cap, and see were the rotor tip is pointing. If it ain't pointing at the #1 plug wire terminal on the dist. cap, it has most likely jumped time.


|UPDATED|5/9/2013 7:53:28 PM (AZT)|/UPDATED|

Mine did exactly the same thing after a 5 hour engine run in. Had me scratching my head too,

Well had not had time to work on it but I was ready to have it towed to the shop thinking it was the timing belt but decided to try one more time without any pumping/choke....well after just a little fuel she fired right up and I was in heaven with the sound of the car. So I guess it e Was really flooded, yet strange since I have had the car I have never flooded it before. I pretty much know how much accelerated to give it....or I thought but she started right up. I hope that is it but will run a couple of times to see and of course it could be more tha that but I guess I will find out.Time to get the passenger window back in although I don't need that and get her on the road before summer is over. Thanks to all for all the advice and hope I will not need some of it in the future. Sorry for the delay but life gets in the way of driving the Corvette!!! BB