Hey yall, this forum has an incredible amount of knowledge but nothing I’ve seen on here has been able to help me start this 1993 2.3L 2WD 5speed manual that I picked up for $150. It came with lots of engine parts mostly disassembled and thrown in the bed- valve cover, intake, vac lines, EGR, wiring harness, spark plugs, other electronics and sensors, and anything to do with the serpentine belt/pulleys. Below are the things I’ve tested/tried:

50/50 test- won’t run but backfires through the intake (super super loud) when cranking and spraying starter fluid… leads me to believe it’s either timing, spark, or compression.

Fuel rail has plenty of pressure and new gas, cranking without starter fluid just gives even more backfiring so it’s getting fuel. There doesn’t appear to be any fuel in FPR vac line. Fuel pump audibly whirs on key turn. I’m hoping to rent a gauge tester soon but I don’t think that will help much.

Timing- came with a broken timing belt so I replaced it and made sure to line up all the marks- the camshaft gear triangle with the plastic notch at 5 o clock, and crank pulley white line matches with TC on the timing cover. I’ve quadrupled checked it since intake flames don’t seem to be possible with proper timing.

Spark- hooking up a timing light to cyl 1 and cranking it does show that it is firing, and multimeter shows that coil packs are getting power. ICM ground tests fine. Replaced all spark plugs as the old ones were beyond anything I’d ever seen in terms of gunk. Something interesting to note is that the timing gun I have occasionally missed and didn’t indicate spark when cranking, it would only skip 1 or 2 times in 10 seconds of cranking. Other places I read said that those guns don’t work too well with waste spark, so I assume it is getting enough spark

Compression- I rented a loaner tester but I’m not sure I am doing it right. The tester needs a couple of adapters to fit in the spark plug hole and it’s impossible to tighten down with tools because of where it’s at. I also read that you need a fully charged battery, or it can falsely show lower compression, and when I tested it, my battery was somewhere near dead. I was only able to test cylinder 1, and it read about 90 for about 7 seconds of cranking. I was unable to test the other cylinders as it got too cold and dark.

I also spent the time to take off the valve cover and turn it over by hand and everything seems to be working properly. the oil that came in the engine wasn’t new but it wasn’t bad, nothing looks particularly worn down or stuck, but then again I’ve never taken a valve cover off of an overhead cam engine before.

My gut is telling me that either something is wrong with either the valvetrain, the timing, or something else compression related. The truck is currently in a field 20 minutes away from where I live, so I have to intentionally plan time to go work on it. I’m hoping to do a better compression test later in the week by having it jumped to my daily driver while I crank it, have accurate fuel rail pressure numbers, and get the CEL bulb replaced to read codes.

Any thoughts?