This morning, while driving my '91 Chevy S10 Blazer (4wd, 4.3 V6 auto with 237k on the clock) home from work it stalled on me, while cruising down the highway at 65mph. Up until the moment it stalled it was running great. Pulled over to the shoulder with it and restarted it, but it ran for ~10 seconds before quitting pretty suddenly again. Tried again, standing on the gas while in park did not make much difference. Finally after around the 3rd or 4th try I decided to give it a go and put it in drive. Ran fine the rest of the way home. I suspect perhaps the fuel pump’s on its way out. Put a fuel pump in about 2 years ago (Had 205k give or take at the time), though if I remember right its behavior when that one went was that it tended to sputter a lot more before conking out. This was more like as if I shut the car off w/ the key. My question is, anything else I can check out on this thing before bringing it to the shop, and perhaps ending up throwing parts at it?
Whose shop? What mechanic? What mechanic starts throwing parts before doing any troubleshooting? If a mechanic starts looking for parts to change before doing any troubleshooting, he ain’t no mechanic.
In the present problem, a mechanic would start troubleshooting with a system. Here, the spark production system.
A friend had the same problem with his wife’s Blazer. In his case, the S10 would not start intermittantly. It even happened in the garage while we were working on it. He replaced the fuel pump, spark plugs, wires, rotor, and cap. When we tested we sometimes got spark and sometimes didn’t. Finally, he broke down and bought the igniter which cured the problem. I suspect that is your problem.
The problem might be with ignition module in the distributor. When these fail it’s as if the ignition was turned off while driving.
The ignition module can be removed from the distributor and brought in to be tested at some parts stores. However, when doing this make sure it’s tested for a minimum of 20 minutes. Sometimes they don’t show up as being defective until they’ve had time to heat up.
Tester