Need some help...first, check out my sig to gain an understanding of how my car's equipped. Here's the problem: I am having intermittent problems with my car acting like it's running out of gas and then dying. It has done this a variety of ways...sometimes it would start up again after dying and then behave normally through 1st & 2nd gear, only to begin to lose power in 3rd and eventually die. It also had an episode of immediately losing power upon startup, with me madly revving the engine and the car lurching forward, stumbling, lurching, stumbling...in a desperate attempt to get the car home. It died again, and then acted semi-OK and I managed to get the thing back into my driveway.

I don't think I induced this problem, but just in case, here's what has been done to it since yesterday:

• Converted to 3.73 gears w/posi from 3.08 pegleg yesterday, but no problems for about 50 miles afterwards
• Hooked up a spark plug wire that had come loose today after several days of the engine running on 7 cylinders...the whole time I thought I needed to replace the plug wires (duh)

Any ideas? I'm guessing a dying fuel pump (still using the stock TBI electric intank pump), fuel regulator issues, distributor problem, etc. I have had multiple fruitless attempts at doing searches on the board for this type of problem...

 

Try troubleshooting for this specific problem.

When the car is ACTUALLY IN THE ACT OF FAILING, and it has just completed its little cycle of running like crap and dying, pop the top of the carb off, and see how much fuel is in the bowl.

I'm betting you'll find it has run dry.

I'm suspecting that there's a problem with either your regulator or fuel pump; more likely, the regulator, from the description.

 

Thanks for the reply, but since this is my daily driver, I had to give up & have it towed to the local shop this afternoon. I'll post again once they are able to diagnose the problem...you may have nailed it...we'll see.

 

Well, I got the bad news back from the shop today...my fuel pump is dead, just like I/we had suspected. Now, I've just got to figure out what to do next:

• Replace it with the factory pump (probably a bad idea...I think it was contributing to a pretty bad "stumble" I had in 1st gear)
• Install a Walbro in-tank elecric fuel pump
• Install an in-line electric fuel pump (hot, loud, etc...but maybe the best solution)
• Install a mechanical fuel pump (mechanic was concerned about vapor lock with where the fuel line penetrates the gas tank)

I'm about to dig through the archives to see what the best option would be...