Hello everyone. I'm brand new here. I just got a 91 Firebird Formula. I'm a Marine stationed at Cherry Point. I got the car from Kinston, NC which is about an hour drive for me. When I came to look at the car a week ago I was excited to say the least. It's my favorite body style and the 305 tpi is all the power I need in a car. The T-Tops and weather strips are in great condition. The car has 120,000 miles on it so she's had her share of running but she's in great shape. The car is beautiful. It's in excellent cosmetic condition and I THOUGHT it was in great mechanical condition as well because I did test drive it last week, and the day before yesterd when I picked it up, it was a perfectly smooth right home. The only thing was I couldn't get the cruise control to work while coming home. When I got back to Cherry Point I had to make a stop at "Pass and ID" to put a DOD decal on the windshield so that I could come on to base. Everything up to that point was smooth sailing. I get on base and stop at a red light... THE ENGINE DIES! For absolutely no appearant reason. I put it in park, turn the key off, and try to start. Nothing happens. I pump the gas while turning the key, and it starts after about 5 seconds. Then it starts losing power as I'm getting to the next red light. The steering starts to lock up, giving it more gas does nothing, and the gauges are going crazy. It dies again. I finally get it to start again and then I pull into a parking lot because I knew it wasn't going to make it home. I wait a couple of minutes and try to start it again. I couldn't get it to start to save my life. I'm no mechanic by any means, that's not my MOS haha. I've replaced the ECM and the distributor because a mechanic I know told me that it sounded like glitch in the engines computer and they've been known to be kind of faulty in the early 90's vehicles. As I said before, I'm no mechanic so I really don't know where else to start. It's not the fuel pump or fuel filter because I can hear the pump kick on, I changed the fuel filter, and my buddy checked the fuel pressure at 45psi. So there's nothing clogging the fuel line. What can it be??? Any input would be greatly appreciated.

 

Sounds like you in for a bit of fun haha. Well first things first getting it started would be a good place to start. I would try shooting some starter fluid in the throttle body and then cranking it over. If it starts and runs for a moment your ignition system is probably ok. If it dosnt then we need to look deeper into the ignition system. Once we get it started we can see what else is going on. Also on a side note any trouble codes? Have you looked to see if a wiring harness has fallen onto the exhaust manifold or something of that nature?

 

Sorry I didn't get back on here sooner. It was fixed the day before yesterday. Turns out, it was a bad fuel injector. Once that one was replaced, they all worked again. I'm glad to have her up and running again. It might have been even faster if I got back on here and communicated with you guys a little more. Oh well, it was fun