I got an 89 pickup, 2wd with the 22re, this morning i went to start it up and started for about 2 seconds, then sputtered out and died. Now will only crank. i got great spark, im getting fuel and my air filter is pretty clean. i checked all my fuses and they all checked out. Only thing i did recently was wash out the engine bay. any idea whats going on? any and all help will be GREATLY appreciated.

 

COR, AFM, ECU, wiring, are what I would check, in that order.
Can you hear the fuel pump run when you turn the key to crank, without pushing in the clutch, or using the clutch cancel switch? You say you're getting fuel, but are you getting fuel FLOW?
You might try also taking the plug off each injector, and hitting with electrical contact cleaner, in case one or more have water in them.
Nothing else, pull each and every plug that might have gotten water in them, give them a squirt of WD-40 (Water Displacing formula #40. Think about it), and then a short squirt of electrical contact cleaner. I'll bet one or more have water in them someplace. Check EVERY plug. Start at one side/end, and work to the other. If it even LOOKS like a plug, do it.

Good luck!
Pat☺

 

okay, so i got it working later that day (sorry for the late response). all i did was crank it for about 15-20 seconds, then it started sputtering. i gave it some throttle and then it started up perfectly. and ran great. but recently its been sputtering when started every so often, but runs perfectly normal, and when it starts a puff of white-ish smoke puffs out the tail pipe, ive been thinking its a fuel issue but have no idea how to diagnose any specifics with it,

 

White smoke out the tail pipe indicates, to me, and I may well be wrong, an oil leak into a cylinder. Probably either bad rings, or a bad head gasket. If it were me, I would guess head gasket. Just me, though. I may well be way off base.

Pull the plugs, and look for a white deposit on one, or more, of them. At least you'll know what cylinder to focus on. You can do a pressure test for each cylinder, and a leak-down test after that. Low pressure in a cylinder, and/or a leak-down over specs, will tell you the tale.
I'm betting, personally, on the head gasket. They are known to fail every so often. Just me, though.

Good luck!
Pat☺

 

"White" smoke is usually water, "blue" smoke is usually oil, and "black" smoke is usually a mis-fire (unburned gasoline).

All engines emit water (the combustion products are principally CO2 and water), but it's usually warm enough to be in invisible vapor form. On a cold morning, where the air and exhaust system is cold, you should see "white smoke" for a few seconds until the exhaust chain is warmed up. If you have the right kind of head gasket failure, you could be sucking in enough coolant that you get a lot of white smoke that last for more than a few seconds.

Your engine shouldn't burn enough oil at any time to produce visible smoke, but you could burn oil with a leaky headgasket or rings. If you only get a puff or two of blue smoke at startup, I would suspect the valve guides. Oil sits in the rocker space overnight, and seeps through the valve guides into the cylinder. Once the engine starts, that oil is burned and it doesn't leak fast enough to add more oil.

Is your smoke white or blue? Heck, I can't tell either. But put your hand into it. If your hand gets wet, it's water. If it gets oily, it's oil. If both, you may have a problem.

Having said all that, there are a lot of places I'd look before I condemned the head gasket. A compression test is easy to do, it's an important baseline measurement, the instrument only costs $30, and you that's a tool you should have anyway. If your compression is acceptable, be sure to check ignition timing (another $30 tool you should have anyway.)