Chevy Blazer RPMs surge high at startup, then dies. Help?!

jhardin
Tue, 10 Feb 2015 22:07:26 +0000
Maintenance/Repairs

This is my first post here, and I’m not too mechanically-savvy with vehicles, so please bear with me.
I have a 1998 Chevy Blazer (2WD) with 115k miles. When I turn the key and start the car, the RPMs rev up really high for about 4 seconds and then drop down real low until the car dies. All in all this is about an 8-second process, and it sounds like I’m flooring the accelerator when, in fact, I’m not even touching it. The Blazer just started doing this, but previously for about the last few months about once a month, when I would start the car I would get a loud backfire sound which sounded like it came from under the hood (driver’s side), and this was followed by the smell of exhaust coming into the cab through the AC vents.
I have no idea how to go about diagnosing this since I’m unable to drive it to get the codes read, so any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for the help. Cheers!

12 posts - 5 participants