My 1987 ranger 2.3L runs awful. a few times it started to run rough once it got to temp, then one day I ended up overheating it, and as I was letting it cool at idle, it started running rough, died, and has not run well since. It backfires a lot and loudly from the exhaust and it makes very little power. I have replaced the coil pack, wires, plugs, distributor cap and rotor, checked fuel filters and pumps, and cleaned and tested the fuel injectors to no avail. Any advice is appreciated I am tired of losing money and sanity to this rust bucket. I have attached some videos of it running.

 

I guess the first thing would be to do a compression test, this engine does use a timing BELT so it can wear out/stretch and compression drops under 120psi, should be 150+psi
Belt also times spark(turns distributor) so backfiring could relate to this as well, but backfiring is also caused by misfires, the un-burned fuel is ignited in the exhaust manifold by the next cylinder that does fire, so rough running(misfires) and backfires go hand in hand

Unless compression is good there would be no reason to spend money or time on anything else
Need to test all 4 cylinder because of the overheating, could be the head cracked or head gasket was crushed, which is caused by overheating

 

thats a badass sounding truck. this is obviously a fake video since the frame isnt rusty though

 

Hi RonD, thanks for the advice. I actually did a compression test a little while ago just after it started running like this, all cylindars had close to 130psi. I wasn't very concerned about the numbers because they were all very similar and i was hoping i ruled out a cracked head or block. I currently have it disassembled to do the timing belt and am planning to swap in a new one afterThanksgiving and if nothing less, i'll get the experience of doing my first timing belt.