Well, to make a long story short, car cranks and cranks and cranks, but still wont fire. Tried everything so far, swapped ecm's, fuel pressure is at 41 psi at the rails, new icm, coil, distributor, its getting spark, plugs are wet after cranking, and the injectors are getting power, not sure about a pulse yet since i havent been able to track down a noid light, car has strong compression in all cylinders, made no mechanical noise indicating an internal failure. umm...o yeah, and i also learned a valuable lesson about testing the fuel pressure, then 20 minutes later swapping a distributor and setting timing, fuel that sprayed out when hooking on the pressure gauge was sitting on the motor while we were setting timing, and it backfired out of the TB pretty good, lol...well, lets just say the engine bay looked like satan was about to make an appearance, and amen for the garden hose. That was fun, anyways, any ideas on what to check out next, i'm totally stumped. It seems like everything is working ok, and when you crank it it sounds like its about to fire up, but just wont idle. Thanks guys.

 

anyone have any thoughts?

 

What does your fuel pressure do if you prime the system, and then let it sit? It should hold pressure for a good long time, (it will bleed down 1-2 psi immediately) If it drops quickly, you have something leaking. How wet were the plugs? Got a scan tool that will show data?

You need fuel, air (in the correct proportions) and spark (at the right time) for the engine to run. You have spark and fuel, so, next step is to see if timing is correct, and if so, see about fuel....

 

If it backfired out the intake the timing is wrong.