i have an 88 celebrity eurosport with the 2.8 in it. i was in a highway last week going to get parts for a tracker that my family also owns and my car backfired twice and then stalled, and started right back up after giving it a minute to cool off. blew my muffler apart completely. (it was the stock one too!) i replaced the exhaust from the tailpipe all the way to about under the seat approximately. it was driving rough, cutting my gas mileage in half, horrible gas smell, car shakes tremendously, and it’s lacking acceleration. before all of this happened, i drove it everyday (it’s my daily), and it was perfectly fine. just normal everyday driving. now i changed the plugs and it’s still doing the same stuff. when i changed them today i noticed that 2 of them had a gas smell and were burnt looking. i have all new wires, and a new coil pack. please help. i love this car so much and i don’t want it to continue to drive like crap.

 

Stuck carb float. You can tap on the top of the carb to see if it is stuck (which I suspect), and or replace, re-kit the carb.

 

don’t think it’s got one bud. no throttle body. multi port fuel injection.

 

Unplug the mass airflow sensor. See if the problem still happens. Drive it about, warm it up. The MIL will probably come on, but if it does and the problem goes away replace the mass airflow sensor. Bad signals from those can really mess with your fuel ratio, to the point the car won't even run, and these cars had both intake air temperature and metering built in. Coolant temp sensor can also monkey with fuel ratios, if it's sending a faulty signal for really low temperature. Modern scantools don't like our old OBD1 cars but if it interfaces you can check the readouts, but you can probe them for voltage, or use an oscilloscope to map them and see if they have dead spots or are all wacky. Crankshaft position sensor can cause ignition timing issues if the signal is bad, backfiring can happen from that, but usually the car just won't run, or will stall.

That's the easier stuff. One other thing to check is physical timing. If the engine jumped timing by a tooth, this stuff happens. Backfiring and running very badly/stalling, if it runs at all.