For the first time in the 4 years I’ve owned it, my car left me stranded. It’s mostly my fault though. It was about 18 this morning when I went out to start the car. Pumped the pedal twice and it fired right up like always. Instead of letting it warm up like I should, I let it idle high for about 15 seconds and kicked it down and headed over to the My Town stores to do some computer work. That is only about four blocks away from the house, so the car still didn’t have time to get warmed up.
I go in and work for about 45 minutes and come out to leave, pump it twice again, and it starts, but stumbles. Pump it a couple more times to try to keep it going but it dies. In trying to start it again I pump it AGAIN and now it won’t start at all, just turn over. Pop the hood and you can REALLY smell the gas. Flooded. Damn. I let it sit for about 10 minutes, but she still won’t start. Took the cover off the air cleaner and there’s liquid gasoline on the choke plates on the top of the carb. That’s REAL flooded.
So I got a ride to work and will go try to start it again over lunch. That should be enough time for the gas to evaporate. As long as I didn’t kill the battery with all the cranking! Lesson learned. Should have let it warm up.
February 19th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Well, got it fired up during lunch. Just held the throttle wide open and cranked it until it ran. Big puff of black smoke out the tailpipe and the strong fumes of lots of un-burnt fuel. I had drowned that puppy! But once all the excess fuel burnt off, it ran the same as always. Guess there’s a reason they went to fuel injection. So idiots in a hurry like me won’t get stranded! Ha ha.
February 20th, 2009 at 4:49 am
But today’s cars wouldn’t run the years and miles that your car has.