Engine popping sound!!!

[85' 3.8 Limited]

I was driving home from work and I was going to pass someone, so I gave it some gas and the engine made a popping sound, sounded like a backfire from the intake. What could be causing this issue???

 

[RITTER]

Your timing is way off or your timing chain slipped :|

 

[GP403]

If it just popped, hesitated, and kept on going, then you probably need a new distributor or at least a rebuild. The pickup coil wires go bad and it'll do this under load or sudden acceleration. If the timing chain slipped then it wouldn't run correctly (if at all) after.

 

[gbgn1]

Look at your carburator.The accelerator pump is probably wore out>>>>

 

[RITTER]

Yeah, there are a lot of possibilities here

 

[Minion1186]

I'm watching this one, my 350 sbo started doing this before i parked it.
I think it could be ignition or carb, my holley ended up blowing the powervalve to hell and it ran like sh*t after that.

 

[MonteCarloZay]

What kind of spark plugs are you running? You could have the wrong spark plugs! My friend had this same exact problem with his 78 Monte Carlo! He bought it with a high performance 350 already in it and the guy he bought it from gave him some spark plugs to do the tune up with. When he got done with the tune up, he decided to take it for a spin around the block and when he hit the gas, his car made a popping sound! People told him that the timing was off and that he had an exhaust leak too but we decided to take it to a high performance engine builder and he discovered that he was using the wrong spark plugs! He was using AC Delco's for a 94-96 GM vehicle! The guy took those off and put some ACCEL Plugs and Wires on it and that bad baby FLEW!!! Hope that was any help to your problem......

 

[85' 3.8 Limited]

Well... I'm not sure if this is any help but when I was checking the plugs, I was pulling the wires off of the distributor with rubber grip pliers and I got a nice little jolt of electricity. The reason I was doing that was that the car was running like crap, so it was an easy to check if one of the plugs wasn't firing.

 

[pontiacgp]

if the wires are bad it could be cross-fire induction causing a plug to fire with the intake valve open

 

[85' 3.8 Limited]

Would my car running bad have any input on the backfiring??? It wants to hesitate when I give it more gas to speed up; for example, when I'm going 45 and I want to speed up to 55, it bucks and hesitates when I push the pedal in. Most of the time I have to mash the pedal to the floor and go to 3rd just to speed up.