I'm stumped so wondering if someone can give me a suggestion. I posted this on the jeep forum but I've not gotten any suggestion. I bought a 2001 Cherokee with a 4.7 V8 engine to fix up for my sister. It's got high mileage but the car is in good shape. The engine cranks just fine and the engine tries to fire but it won't start. I've checked the spark on no. 1 cylinder and it has a good spark. I've poured a small amount of fuel into the throttle body but it doesn't fire. If I hold the throttle wide open it helps but it backfires into the intake manifold like the ignition is out of time. I've checked compression on all of the cylinders and the compression varies some from cylinder to cylinder but it should be good enough to run 120-150 psi. I think the valves are leaking a bit because when I add oil to the cylinder, the compression doesn't improve much. The car has been sitting for 4 months so I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a little rust on some of the valve seats. I can't put a timing light on the ignition to check the timing. As I understand the manual, the crank position sensor and the PCM control the timing and the cam sensor controls the fuel but since there's spark, I didn't think it's likely to be a crank sensor. The ignition seems to be somewhat random since when it fires, it kicks back against the starter and stalls the engine during cranking. Does this sound like anything familiar?

 

Try the GC section. This is for the XJ's. A completely different animal. You might get the answer that you need there.

 

Thanks...obviously I'm new here. I've re-posted it in the GC section.