My son decelerated to a stop light and then according to him, when he tried to accelerate the engine started missing and would not go at all. When I towed it home, I removed the r/h timing belt cover to find a shredded belt which I replaced along with the other side. The motor behaved to the best of my recollection, about the same as it did the night we towed it home. Had a mechanic friend come over and we did compression checks (ok), timing re-checks (ok), all of the things one would normally think of (ok). The distributor was a little loose so I replaced that with no change at all. The symptoms are:
a.. rough idle b.. starts up as though it's flooded c.. vacuum oscillates wildly at any speed (it uses the full gauge) except when fully loaded and then it's at near zero d.. backfires through the carb. at all times except when fully opened up Does this sound like a blown head gasket and if so, how does one diagnose that? (the compression check showed between 120-140 on all cylinders.
Thanks in advance,
Peter