2013 Kia Soul 1.6L excessive fuel fouling of plugs

Hey everyone I have a Kia that I could use some help on. It is a 2013 Kia Soul 1.6L that came to the shop not starting. The only codes in the PCM are P0300 and P0301. The engine cranks over too fast when cranking almost like washed cylinders so I verified compression early on and found cyl 1 and 2 to be roughly 160 lbs  and 3 and 4 to be 140 and 135. When the plugs are out you can immediately see that they are fuel fouled and cleaning them off and reinstalling them will result in the vehicle running for roughly 10-15 seconds but you can not rev the motor and after the initial 10-15 seconds the plugs will be fouled again. I was worried about the fuel being contaminated but taking a fuel sample the fuel looks really good and checking for ethanol content I got just a little over 5% ethanol in the tester. We did pull the upstream O2 sensor to see if the converter was stopped up and there was no change but I do not have a backpressure gauge to get a reading with. We were worried about timing since the motor still turns over too fast and according to the waveforms provided by Kia in Alldata the exhaust cam was off when we checked both cams against the CKPS although the information in Alldata left a whole lot to be inferred. After consulting the customer i stayed late to take the valve cover loose and when the crank is on its mark the cams are lined up really well. Looking through the datastream the coolant temperature was very reasonable at 75 degrees and I don't see anything really that far off of what I would expect. We are down 2 people in the last month and trying to diagnose this at the same time as everything else has been far from ideal. I just need some more ideas of what else would cause extreme fuel fouling of the plugs, looking through the datastream while cranking it the on time for the injectors was around 3 milliseconds and if it helps at all cylinder 4 spark plug was the least fuel fouled of all 4. I haven't checked the injector control signals but when the plugs are dry the engine cranks and runs without much effort. I'm trying to upload photos of the pico capture as well as the fuel test and timing marks but for some reason it doesn't like my camera's format although they are jpg.

Has it got a fuel rail mounted  fuel pressure regulator or pressure pulse damper ?    --- leaking diaphram on that wouls be a suspect.

It is a GDI high pressure system and according to the data stream I saw the pressure as a little over 800 psi one time I checked. I don't have much training on these but from what I understand fuel flows from the high pressure pump directly to the injectors with no return. I watched the data to see that pressure didn't bleed off quickly after I had cranked on it. I'm going to check for any other components that I might be missing.

There is a occasional issue with the gdi engines, only seen it 2 times as a dealer tech. Many times you get a rick or lean code with it. Check the oil level and see if it's high, or has a fuel smell. If so, replace the high pressure pump, o-ring, and high pressure fuel line.

Is there any way for me to test this so I can demonstrate the fault to my customer? I don't have any sort of pressure tester capable of handling the pressure output from this pump, the oil did smell a bit like gasoline to me but my nose just isn't the best. Just looking for a way to prove this out since these pumps aren't cheap.

No good way to show it. If while the engine is idling, and you disable the injectors, the engine behaves accordingly to each one, rule them out. That leave the high pressure pump as the only thing left with fuel in it that has access to the inside of the engine. It bolts to the camshaft ladder on the exhaust side, and rides on a square cam lobe via tappet. Spring loaded plunger then presses a diaphragm inside the pump to build the pressure. Any internal leak in that pump is gonna go right into the cylinder head and drain into the crank case. If you removed the pump, you MIGHT have a small amount of fuel on the spring or plunger. Not likely, though. Disconnecting the pump requires (according to Hyundai, and for good practices) replacement of the high pressure fuel pipe that goes to the rail (torque both connections to 19lbft). Pipe is around $50 if I remember correctly. When I had the issues with this pump causing Goofy stuff like this, Hyundai engineers always told me to check oil level and smell. If higher than expected and smells like fuel, replace pump, pipe, o-ring.

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No good way to show it. If while the engine is idling, and you disable the injectors, the engine behaves accordingly to each one, rule them out. That leave the high pressure pump as the only thing left with fuel in it that has access to the inside of the engine.
 

This is my issue, I can't get the vehicle to run more than 10-15 seconds so that I could disable injectors and check results, but after some consideration here is what I've come up to and at least I have a plan now. I believe that the plugs aren't capable of fully combusting all of the fuel that is being put into the cylinders. My thought and I can certainly be wrong here is that other than an injector or injectors leaking there is no way for excessive fuel to enter the cylinder other than a leaking injector or a control issue on the PCM side holding injectors open. I went and rechecked for a fuel smell in the oil and Monday I'm going to start with new plugs to eliminate that possibility. The customer has been zero help as far as how we got to this point but given that the fuel tested good, there is definitely spark, the datastream shows even and reasonable injector on time, the fuel rail pressure doesn't bleed off quickly (from a leaking injector), an absence of codes, and disconnecting the oxygen sensor left me with the same results. I have a mobile diagnostician coming Monday to give me a definitive answer so I can still be completely wrong on this but I will find that out in the next 24 hours hopefully.

I had some trouble signing in the last couple of days but we came to a conclusion. The timing on the intake camshaft was off significantly. The front portion of the camshaft was correct in that the timing marks lined up perfectly but when we opened it up again and took note of the camshaft lobes the intake valve was going to be engaged after the exhaust camshaft. This was shown in the shift that I had with the initial scope captures but I mislabeled the intake and exhaust cams while doing my testing and it was pure lack of experience to consider that as a possibility but my diagnostic guy is right when you're at TDC the intake valve opening must proceed the exhaust valve opening. We verified physical TDC to make sure the crankshaft pulley hadn't shifted and verified clockwise rotation of the engine to make sure it wasn't backwards from most everything else. In the end the camshaft has to be shifted back and it is opening all of the intake valves very late. It's actually kind of amazing that the vehicle runs at all but this would answer why the engine cranks over fast. I'm going to try and include a link to a YouTube video that I made to show what I'm talking about for anyone possibly running into this in the future. We did look at the high pressure pump but found no evidence of leaking. I'm not sure if it's kosher for the forum but here's the link 

Thank you to those who responded, in the end with the body damage and depth of repair needed we decided not to marry this vehicle but we have a pretty good idea as to what is actually wrong at this point. 

  

You`re saying the intake valve should open before the exhaust valve opens... At TDC compression the exhaust valve is the next to open at the end of the power stroke, obviously.....at TDC exhaust the intake valve will/should open before the exhaust valve CLOSES!

Is this what you meant?

 At TDC compression the exhaust valve is the next to open

Agreed.