Chevrolet - 3500 :: 1994 - Intermittently Dies At Idle
May 28, 2016
94 Chevy W-4 wheel-lift wrecker 5.7L TBI4l80e trans
Had a run of about 100 miles round trip on Wednesday. On the way back running at 65 mph on the interstate, got a couple of quick muffler-end back fires and engine died. Coasted to shoulder. Had memory of almost exact same incident last year and it was dead ignition module. Fortunately had a spare (used) module in glovebox. Swapped it out and engine started right up. Remainder of trip didn't quit, but ran very rough, lots of stumbling and getting it up to 60 mph was a struggle. Also when I got on surface roads it died twice when I was sitting stationary. It would restart, BUT only after cycling key; if I just turned to the key to "start" from "on" it would crank but not fire.
Limped it to my tow buddy's shop where I freeload and told him the tale. He said, "throw those old spare modules away and get a new one". Called the local parts house and had them send two, one for installation and one for glovebox. Took for test drive and appeared to be running okay except idle was a bit low. Couple of hours later went on a call and first stop sign I came to, went "blip" and I'm dead in the water again. Same story as earlier, must turn key off and back on to get it to fire. Drove rest of day without incident. Yesterday, no issues all day, drove total of about 120 miles both highway speed and surface. Gassed up this morning and mpg was above average (yay!), actually about .5 above average which is significant improvement (about 6%). Success?
Today died four times while sitting still. Same having to cycle key for it to fire. Did some quicky t/s to satisfy my curiosity about the key cycle thing. With truck running, pulled fuel pump fuse to kill truck. Then reinserted and it started up without having to turn key to off. Tried same thing by pulling one of the module plugs to simulate loss of signal to ignition. Reconnected and again fired up without key cycling.
No codes at any time since this came up.
Swapped out the module since I had bought a spare, no change.
Ohmd the ignition coil and no problems noted. So far, only dies sitting still at idle.
Additional info:
Plug wires, cap, and rotor <1000 miles. Distributor low miles and negligible play in shaft. Pickup coil checks right in middle of ohm range. None of these, of course, should need to have the ignition key cycled to restart if they caused a stall.
Next up will be replacing ignition relay (had to order), but I'm not very optimistic.
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I've recently acquired a 1982 Chevette. 4-door manual transmission, gas (not diesel). It's being used for a film, and it's perfect except for one little issue.
The car starts fine (sometimes needs a little starter fluid), and generally drives fine around town. But if you sit and idle for a couple minutes after driving (usually longer than a normal red light), once you start going (usually in 2nd gear), the engine sputters and the car dies. When this happens, the car won't start for 10-15 minutes. The engine turns over but doesn't fire. Starter fluid will get it going, but as soon as it burns that, it dies.
The problem appears to be that gas is not getting into the carburetor. It has a new fuel pump, and we've replace the fuel line and cleaned out the fuel filter. The carb is not stock. It's a Holley that it had when we purchased it. There are a lot of outlets capped off, and I don't know enough to know what might not be hooked up properly.
After the car dies, the fuel pump buzzes as if it's trying to pump fuel, but it doesn't appear to actually be pumping. Normally we just wait it out, but sometimes we kill the battery trying to restart it. We've successfully push-started it a couple of times, but that only works after enough time has passed that it would have probably started up fine anyway (if we hadn't killed the battery trying).
To sum up, if we follow this sequence of events, the problem will always present itself: start up normally (after not having driven for a couple hours), drive a few miles, idle for 2 or more minutes and then continue driving. Once we continue driving, it dies before we get up to speed.
What to do? I only know enough about this to barely describe the problem, but I am not a car guy. I've been learning little by little with this one. We have recently replaced the spark plugs, wires, distributor cap and rotor, ignition control module, ignition coil, thermostat, o2 sensor and alternator belt. None of this has had a noticeable affect on the problem.
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