When I go to turn my car on it takes long time to fire and when it does there is a VERY strong smell of gas now. What is this a symptom of?

 

Broken fuel injectors? Sounds like you're getting fuel leaking down into the cylinders that might be flooding the motor. So when you go to start it, it'll take a while until it burns all that gas.....then it'll probably blow some black tailpipe smoke, or stink of burnt gas for a minute.

Throw a fuel pressure gauge onto your Schrader valve (should be right behind your intake manifold on the fuel rail). Start the car, watch the gauge. Let it idle for a minute, then turn the car off. Watch the gauge again. It should maintain pressure for at least a couple minutes. If you turn the car off and the needle immediately or within a few minutes, starts to drop....you might have a broken injector or two.

When you go to start the car, give it extra gas pedal. If you are flooding out, that'll give the engine some extra air and get it to start up faster.

 

does it also kind of stuble a little when you first get on the gas, say from a light?

I'm thinking a bad coil, or low voltage on the primary side of it at least. That'll give you hard starts and not burn the fuel completly, giving you that nasty gas smell.

 

If it takes that long to fire, run a check on your ignition system. Also, if you floor the pedal while cranking, the ECM turns the injectors off in a "clear flood" mode. DON'T crank the engine for too long without any fire, the excess gas seeps past the piston rings into the oil and thins that out, not to mention possibly clogging the oil filter and stinking everything up when you next change the oil. YUCK!! Think of this as a blown head gasket, except the stuff making the oil turn into a milkshake is GAS.

 

get your finger out of it.

 

How do I check my coil? Because it does have a stumble when accelerating.

 

I'd definately check the fuel pressure, but before we go further:

When's the last time you gave that engine a major tuneup? If your cap & rotor are 5 years old........

 

Pull off the coil wire and shove a big screw driver in there, then hold the HANDLE part of the screwdriver about 1/8-1/4 of an inch away from a good ground (strut bolts are good) and have someone crank it. You should get a nice bright white spark at about 1/8 of an inch.

Sorry if I sound rude by making sure that you hold the hanlde, but I've seen and heard of some stupid things and that way, it covers my ****. Cant' blame me.

 

Run your car inthe dark wit hthe hood up. Look for spark leak around the coil n other parts. its the first sign you need a tune up and it will make it run funny.

 

First off, do not even look at the ignition system until you check out the fuel system.

You either have an external fuel leak or fuel is leaking into the engine. Inspect all the fuel lines under the hood. Use a flashlight and look at all the injector o-rings. Turn the key ON and pull the vac hose off of the fuel pressure regulator. If fuel comes out it's junk.

 

Not neccessarily, if you are cranking for a long time without a good spark, then you are firing those injectors everytime you get a signal from the distributor pickup and pumping gas into the motor, then, once you finally fo fire up, the motor is super rich and you can't possibly burn all the fuel that's in the motor. You smell the hydrocarbons coming out the pipe, and that smells like raw gas.

 

Not neccessarily a fuel problem, but most likely. I'm sorry but his symptoms are very indicative of either a flooded engine or an external fuel leak.

 

When you check the coil dont be dumb like me. I tookl the Coil wire off the dist cap and put it to a ground. While i was holding the wire i had my g/f crank the engine. Never lean on the car when you do this it hurts like a SOB I felt the current go in through one arm and out the other.

 

i have the same problem with my car i figure its just not getting enough spark on startup

 

Well, what happened??? Did you fix anything??

 

Not yet, but I did buy some new spark plug wires and new rotor/cap. I will put on tomorrow. Got a set of MSD's 8.5mm for $40 bucks Canadian! Found an MSD coil for $50 too.

 

Well thats cool but don't expect those parts to fix your problem.