hi everyone and thanks in advance for any help....very much appreciated. ok....i just went out and bought a 1991 pontiac formula firebird off of the original owner....very clean....5.0 tpi. auto transmission but the car does not run right, sounds like its missing. the owner told me that she took it to a local garage and they told her that the injectors were bad in 3 of the 8 cylinders so i am ordering a new set of injectors for it. when i first looked at the car she started it up and it ran ok at idle. but i noticed that her husband had pulled the top plug out of the alternator???? not sure why....but when i had it towed to my home on saturday i plugged the connector back into the alternator and tried to start the car. it would fire for about 2 seconds and then cut off, so i removed the plug from the alternator again and it fired right up and idled but still was running rough. so my question is what is the deal with unplugging the alternator to get it to idle???? any ideas?? i have been into cars for over 30 years and could not for the life of me figure this one out. i did get a chance to tear apart the top of the motor to remove the fuel rail today....

 

Congratulations! on your purchase Best of luck to you in the future.

To the point though; not sure about this, but possibly the alternator is shorting out, possibly from the bad injectors. had a simalier problem with my brakes, the kept shorting the injectors out and stalled the car every time they were applied. have you replaced the injectors yet?

 

Not yet. Just ordered them today. Hopefully I will get them by the weekend. Tested the injectors and found out that 2 were bad and one was testing on the low side, car is torn apart right now.......

 

ok i would replace all the injectors, to be safe. And if that fixes it then good.
As thats what i think it is. perhaps an expert has an opinion.