Hey everyone, It's been a while since I joined and things have been going well since picking up my 77 last November until today. So here is my (long) story... I had been noticing over the past week that it has been hard to get the car to start even after a few primes turn key and it cranks for a good 20 to 30 seconds lately with me still tapping gas sometimes I back off after too long ripping the starter give it a second and a second go usually gets it running. This is only recent before this even on coldest days a few pumps and away we go. Once it's started lately I notice when I hit gas it's a delay to the engine and almost wants to stall when listening outside the car and hitting gas it sounds like it's sucking air like a cold air intake would before the engine registers the accel. This had been going on for a few weeks. Well today I pressed my luck and took it for a spin a few minutes down the road at a stop light it seemed to be idling a bit rough but nothing to concetning. Light changed I accelerate to travel speed around 35 and hit the accel to maintain while driving at speed and nothing and the car starts to slow and I coast off the road stalled out go to restart and nothing but starter cranking cannot get a turnover at all had to have it towed home now it's sitting. I haven't had time to look at it at all since I had to move on to other things but hoping maybe someone could give me an idea of where to start. I'm not a mechanic so go easy on me. It's a 77 Pontiac grand safari with 145k and has a Pontiac 400 CID. Only ongoing thing the car has had since I picked it up is a noisy lifter. Im hoping to get lucky and start with easy stuff and find the issue but am aware there is many things that can cause this. Thanks to all who even read all this Mark
Right off the bat, it sounds like a fuel delivery or fuel metering problem. If you shoot some starting fluid down the carb's throat, and the car starts, tbat would at least confirm the fuel problem. Then it is a matter of disconnecting the fuel inlet line and cranking the engine to see if any fuel comes out--1/2 pt. from 30 seconds of cranking. If it does, then remove the fuel filter housing and pop in a new one, put it back together, and use starting fluid to get the engine to run long enough to get it to run on gas.
Start with those first; if it doesn't start on starting fluid, then you'll need to diagnose the ignition system.
Thanks for the tips guys I got the beast running again. 40 years later still can't kill it. Fortunately for me it was operator error and I am embarrassed to say but I ran out of gas. First time in my life on that one but I guess to my defense, I was testing the lower limit of the notoriously inaccurate float guages in a 40 year old car with who knows what at the bottom of the tank and apparently at just under 1/4 remaining my car is out of gas. Good to know going forward I guess. But I did what was recommended because with the guage reading a quarter I really didn't think it was just out of gas. As soon as I sprayed some starter fluid it turned over and died again. I figured at this point maybe the pump but luckily just to be sure before I stated disconnecting stuff that has been left alone for God knows how long, I threw 3 gallons of gas for my mower just to see and low and behold it stayed running. I drove it to the gas station filled it up and it's back on the road where it belongs.
Even though you admit to making a mistake, what counts are two things: 1) you did get it running; 2) you found out the problem with the gauge sender. At least you didn't burn so.ething up in the hardheaded belief that you thought you still had a quarter-tank. I had a 'customer' back in early '02 have his big boat Cadillac towed in for a no-start; turns out, it was fuel-injected, two pumps, and he just cranked and cranked and cranked till he burned up both pumps. Then he got mad when we told him what he'd done, he thought we were trying to rob him!
Haha. And I was gonna say "ain't got no gas in it!" But I figured Id spare you the smart remarks. I ran out of gas last year and drove around with the parking brake on this year
