The engine is flooding with gas and won’t start. Ive replaced the fuel pressure regulator and done a tune up and it still won’t start. When I bought the car it ran but when I brought it home and worked on it for a while and went to drive it and it got out of the driveway and died. I got it started again and let it idle for a few minutes and tried to drive again and it immediately died again. Any suggestions?
Replaced the Fuel pressure regulator? Isn’t this a carbureted vehicle ? I believe it was…but perhaps I am wrong. If she is flooding you need to look into your fuel system and your ignition system. The fuel system may actually be fine but without spark she will flood for sure. If the fuel system was over fueling the same would result… You need to find out which situation you have here.
Do you have spark? Have you tested for this? That is the first thing I would try…you must have adequate spark to ignite the fuel. Also…how old is the fuel, has this vehicle been sitting unused for a long time? Was it prior to recently ? All good questions that need answers before we can proceed.
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I am pretty sure this car has a carburetor, I was never any good at fixing them, but your floats may be sticking. Sometimes a gentle tap at the side of the carb can un stick it.
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The guy i bought it from said it had been sitting for a while. Not sure how long. Its fuel injected and carburated. I used all the gas when I test drove it and then refilled it before driving home. We have tested the spark plugs and they are sparking
Is the fuel injector in the throttle body, with a carb above? If so, that FI may be to enrich the mixture when cold.
The fuel injectors are on top of the carburetor along with the fuel pressure regulator
The engine has throttle body injection.
https://www.rockauto.com/en/moreinfo.php?pk=1078002&cc=1131466&jsn=531
In 1983, there was no such thing as E10 gasoline.
If you’re now using E10 gas in this vehicle, it could be destroying the fuel system components.
Tester
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I’m confused, when I looked up this car on rock auto I saw a carb and even a float for each engine, then when I saw your post I went back and further down the list I saw the TBI. Did they change over midyear? The OP stater he had a fuel pressure regulator so that rules out the needle valve of float I was going to suggest.
The 5L engine has TBI, the larger engine has 2B carb. Even though it is TBI, it looks remarkably like a carb. There’s 2 injectors inside the unit, which bolts on top of the engine where the carb would go. The next question is: how does it know how much fuel to inject? There’s a vacuum operated version and an electronic versions apparently. OP, do you have the vane type air-flow meter gadget between the air cleaner and the TBI unit? If so, if that vane is sticking it could easily cause this symptom.
Also if you’ve been testing it, consider the possibility that your testing itself has flooded the engine. If the tips of the plugs are wet w/fuel, that may well be the case. If so you need to get all that gasoline out of the cylinders first. Remove the plugs, disable spark, crank the engine a few time, then let it sit overnight for the remaining gas to evaporate before re-installing the plugs.
Edit: The fuel system has to be properly bled for it all to work correctly. Your service manual should explain that procedure.
Oh yeah…I remember those. The days of abysmal performance and Heath Kit powered computer controls. Ugh… @Tester makes a good point of mentioning the ethanol issue…it can cause all sorts of fun problems, but usually causes fuel starvation due to deteriorated fuel lines and clogging fuel filters etc. Ethanol acts as a fairly powerful solvent…so if there were deposits in the tank or lines it will try to dissolve them and it causes problems.
We still need to know how your spark is looking… Do you have a nice strong spark? Are the plugs OK etc… it may be fueling just fine but it needs adequate spark as well.
1983 Crown Victoria 302s had throttle body fuel injection. 351Ws had 2V carburetor.