I own a 1999 Toyota 4runnder SR5, 4X4, v-6, with an automatic transmission. For the past 8 months the vehicle intermittently begins to stall and back-fire during initial acceleration as if I have water in the fuel. I’ve replaced the fuel filter twice, plugs, air filter, put heat in the tank but can’t get it to stop. I have not drained the tank because sometimes I can go weeks without any such symptoms before it starts again. It only occurs after shutting the truck off (long enough to run in the store for a few minutes) and starting it again. This usually happens about 1/4 mile down the road. I have to pull the truck to the side of the road, put it in Neutral and give it gas as if to push water tainted fuel through the system, and then everything works great no matter how far I drive it before shutting it off again. The symptom is usually accompanied by backfiring and a serious loss in power/acceleration. I can give it gas and it does absolutely nothing. I can never duplicate the problem since it?s intermittent and therefore can?t trouble shoot it to any one source. PLEASE HELP!
I always think it’s a bad computer that does it, but there are codes to read at places that will do it for free or lend/rent a scan tool. It may even, with luck, help to cure the problem on the first try.
Your OBDII system should definitely have storeed some fault codes. Start by having the codes read.
I seriously doubt that you have bad fuel. My guess is something affecting the fuel metering. That could be anything from a bad fuel regulator to a bad sensor, of which there are a myriad including the mass airflow (MAF) sensor and the manifold absolute pressure (MAP) sensor. Bad fuel really is not that common.