Motorcycle Repair: Honda 280 recon ATV, compression check, sparkplug

Question
One of my ATV's got stuck in mud and was left running for quite sometime, when I arrived and cut it off I noticed a faint ticking in the idle and the engine was very hot. Next time I started it , it backfired and wouldn't run. I changed the oil and the sparkplug got it to fire but then it backfired again. Can you give me any idea of what might be wrong?

Answer
More than likely the atv overheated which you obviously noticed. I would say do a compression check on the engine to see if there has been any loss in compression. The backfiring is probably coming from a leaking valve in which you will need to rebuild the top end of the quad.