Hi all, I have a '72 Z and have been cleaning it up on a home garage resto. Body parts are being painted, rear half of the car is having body work finished up. The running gear is in tact, engine, tranny, and rear end. I added headers and exhaust, and removed smog stuff from the intake. It has been awhile since I last had the car running, and when I went to fire the car up, I used a bit of starting fluid to hear it fire. It fires up just fine with the short squirt of starting fluid, but it doesn't seem to be pulling fuel from the tank. I manually sucked fuel up to the filter, so I know there is fuel there. Before I started the resto, the car started up fine and ran like a champ. My question is, since it's been sitting awhile, is there a possibility that the fuel pump has given up the ghost? Loosing prime perhaps? Or maybe when I removed the smog stuff there is something that I deleted that I nneeded? If anyone out there can give me some advice on what to do next I'd appreciate it.

Thanks in advance!

Mike

Sounds like fuel pump to me. I would switch to an electric fuel pump

Could also be blockage in the fuel line or at the tank. I fought that on a '70 that I've been working on. You can drop a fuel line from the fuel pump into a gas can to see if it picks up gas from there and runs. That would rule out the pump and a simple test to run.

Be sure your gas is fresh. Anything much older than 6 months is iffy with the ethanol mix unless you used Stabil or similar. Try what ncolz suggested, but with new gas.

OK, so checked a few things out, and found that the fuel pump was indeed bad from sitting for a period of time without gas going through it. Installed a new one and immediately sucked fuel to the filter. Thought my problems were solved, still wouldn't fire with the gas. Checked both fuel lines coming off the fuel rail to the carb. bowl inlet and had fuel there, but I have no fuel actually inside the bowls, I removed the drain plugs on the float bowl and had no gas in there. Any suggestions?

Either clogged banjo filters in the carb inlets or stuck needle valves in floats.

Open fuel inlet and remove the banjo filters (if there), see if it runs.

For stuck valves, try lightly tapping on the top of the bowls. Sometimes this will dislodge them.

Edited July 12, 201014 yr by mlc240z