I have a 1992 Camaro rs 3.1 v6. I am trying to resurrect from sitting for the past seven years. I have replaced some things but am running into the issue of it will fire up and idle high, then it will come down and idle rough. But most of the time it doesn’t have enough time to idle down, within 15 seconds of the car firing up their is smoke coming from the engine bay and you can instantly feel the heat coming from the headers and the engine. I pulled the plugs and everyone was carbon fouled (it wasn’t a wet oil foul). There is also no leaks that coming from the car and onto the floor from sitting. Any ideas of what this could be?

Some of the things I’ve replaced
-water pump
-battery
-pcv valve
-thermostat
-ignition coil
-ignition control module
-distributor cap
-distributor rotor
-spark plug wires
-spark plugs
-fuel pump
-fuel filter
-air filter
-coolant sensor
-vacuum hoses
-radiator hoses
-all fluids

 

Hi That_92Camaro, welcome to TGO

When you talk about "headers", are you talking about the stock exhaust manifolds, or has someone actually fitted aftermarket headers to the engine?

The two things that jump out at me are the carbon (fuel) fouled plugs and what you see as excessive heat. I'm left wondering if your injectors could be sticking open from being varnished due to the 7 year sit, of if perhaps the fuel pressure regulator could be leaking. If the injectors or regulator were dumping excess fuel, that fuel would carbon foul the plugs and perhaps be burning off in the exhaust manifolds (or headers if that's what it's actually got) causing them to get pretty hot pretty quick.

Disconnect the vacuum line on the pressure regulator and turn the key on, if any raw fuel comes out the regulator, the diaphragm is defective. Also, I think a fuel pressure test may yield some useful information here......

 

Sorry for the confusion, there is just the stock manifold on it. But I took off the fuel pressure regulator to look at it and it didn’t look to be damaged at all. But I did disconnect the fuel return line and it looked dry as a bone. Could that mean that fuel isn’t returning back to the tank.

 

It could mean that. If your new fuel pump isn't putting out enough pressure, there may not be any excess pressure to return to the fuel tank. This is where a pressure reading on the fuel rail would be most informative

 

Yeah, that would probably help give an idea of how the new fuel pump performs. But, I am leaning towards the fuel injectors because that old gas in the tank was RANCID. It burned when it ran down my arm and killed any plant you would dump it on. Anyways, it completely rusted out the tank and old pump. That’s why I replaced the pump and forget to mention I put a new tank. So I could only imagine what that old gas did to the injectors.

The new pump should perform just as well as the old one wouldn’t you think. I mean it was an exact replacement for the old one.

 

I got my fuel pressure gauge and hooked it up today. It was sitting at 40-41 psi. I let it sit for a while and came back and it didn’t seem to have dropped. I still don’t know what is causing causing the exhaust manifold to smoke that quickly.