Hey guys, my bird won't fly. It's a 91 trans am 'vert with the 305 TPI engine. Today when I fired it up, it ran decently. It kinda shuddered/cut out when I revved it pretty high but it stopped doing that temporarily (for about a minute). However then the performance started going downhill, with the car only allowing me to lightly rev it. Feeling confident enough to take it for a ride around the block, it ran OK with me feather-toeing it. It occasionally cut out but ran decently. However a few minutes into the ride the thing just died despite me driving it very lightly. Totally refused to start, at first it sounded like it was trying (popping, farting, etc). But about a minute into trying to restart it, it just cranked without even sounding like it was doing anything. No pops... nothing. So we looped a rope around the k-member (the bar that passes under the engine perpendicular to the whole car) and towed it home with my dad's truck. This all happened today by the way and still won't start.

And here's another thing, this car was doing this before. I got a new battery (old one was leaking a little) and it fired right up. Ran beautifully for a while. No problems whatsoever. I was really puzzled, considering that it ran like crap (as descibed above) with the old battery and acted reborn with the new one. But it started doing the same thing with the new one too. Something's not getting enough juice? It cranks fine... doesn't seem to be a bad battery. I'm so confused!

 

I would start by checking if your alternator is working properly. If the car was cranking at normal power and not starting the alternator is probably fine though.

My car has been sounding very similar and i just discovered that after changing my plugs my spark plug wires cracked, so im replacing those.. if your using old plug wires like my look those over also..

 

The wires are pretty new in my car, I got this thing a few weeks ago and the previous owner said that he replaced them and put less than 1000 miles on em. After checking them out I don't doubt him. And I replaced the sparkplugs a few weeks ago too.