S1lverSurfer

Have an 83 berlinetta that i bought and it has got me against the ropes. The car shuts off while driving! the engine has been replaced which i just found out. An electric fuel pump has been installed. Here is a list of what I have done to try to fix the issue.

carb rebuilt
full tone up
Brand new fuel pump

Was told the car needs a gas regulator so the fuel pump doesn't over heat and shut off. just drove the car to the gas station a block away and it shut off before i got there. I am at a loss what to do at this point. Please help!

Car shuts off not carb.

sofakingdom

iTrader: (1)

An engine needs 3 things to run: air/fuel mixture in reasonable proportions; spark at more or less the right relation to piston & valve motion; and compression.

The 3 Magic Ingredients.

OK, so your car stops running... pretty simple, really. All ya gotta do is, figure out which one of The Big 3 went away.

Be logical. It's probably not air... at least, I didn't notice you mentioning that you're trying to drive it on Pluto or something. So that cuts the 1st of The Big 3 in half; it's not "air", but it could be FUEL.

Go one step further. The 3rd Magic Ingredient, compression, doesn't just … go away …, and then come back later, and everything is OK, until it … just … goes away … again. Eliminate that one as a potential cause.

And one more: spark doesn't change the time that it occurs to some other time that makes the motor stop working, then randomly restore to the right time, then suddenly do it again. Repeatedly. So while the problem might be "spark", it's not about the "time" that it's occurring.

So after 3 sentences, we're left with possibilities for what's going away: fuel, and spark. Hmmmmm….. how can we tell?

[light bulb]

We can substitute for fuel quite easily. All we have to do is pour some into the intake. Maybe, 2 ounces or so, just dump it in and try starting it. Does that make it start? Even if it only runs for a few seconds? Then the Magic Ingredient that has gone missing is, FUEL. Go to work on the fuel system. Or, does it STILL not start? Well then, that only leaves ONE Magic Ingredient that we need to investigate; SPARK. In which case you need to work on the ignition system.

It's just a car. There's like A BILLION of em in the world. Can't be that hard to keep em working. Use your BRAIMS and apply a little logic instead of panic, you'll zero right in on the problem and have it fixed within 5 minutes or so, at least if you're slow like me. Hell, you're even smart enough to post on the Interwebz, you're obviously WWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYY smarter than I'll ever be; I bet you could have it fixed in 2 minutes, even if you stop TWICE for cold adult beverages in the middle of it all.

My bet would be, either the fuel pump / regulator / whatever else in the fuel system is messed up, or, the ignition module is bad. My first best guess would be the ignition module.

Goldfinger24k

Could the electric fuel pump be putting too much pressure to the carb? Carbs don't need high pressure. As a matter of fact it's not good for them.

S1lverSurfer

How do I check for that?

sofakingdom

iTrader: (1)

By looking down into the intake and seeing if there's fuel spewing everywhere when the car fails.

If you don't see fuel dripping everywhere while trying to start it when it's in one of its moods, then it's not that.

Go back to the post about LOGIC, and leave off of the "maybe it's this, maybe it's that" and grasping at straws in the wind, until you've exhausted all that LOGIC can tell you.