She cranks (yay!). First time cranking after putting the battery back in, she caught and ran for about 5 seconds, then died.

All subsequent attempts, she'd crank and was getting the lovely "old fuel" smell from the exhaust, but she hasn't fired again.

Battery is back on the charger for right now, but is there anything obvious I should be looking at to get her to fire? Bleed the fuel, and if so where? Possible the battery has the volts, but no longer the amperage to crank her hard enough to catch (even if the trickle charger says she's "good")?

 

Ran perfectly before she had to be put away back in October 2012 for legal reasons--got me through the 2000 mile trip from Colorado to Florida just purrfect and averaging 32mpg.

 

'88 GL SPFI D/R

Edited October 25, 201312 yr by SmashedGlass

hi,

  check if a timing belt broke, common on old belts that sit long time.  crank it over and see if the distributor rotor turns , that will tell if a belt broke.  fresh gas is your friend on this , try a little down the throttle body and crank it over,  the more it runs on good gas the better it will get,  needs a hundred miles or so to do lots better.

Puppy caught and ran for five minutes?

Car ran perfectly before storage?

 

Symptoms DO NOT point to your alternator.

However, if the car cranked and ran for five minutes... What kind of death occurred?

 

Did lights slowly dim as the car ran?

 

Grab a multimeter and measure voltage coming from your battery as the car runs.

I'm curious as to the results.

 

 

 

Seconds, Boxer, seconds.

 

 And barely at that.

 

It's probably bad gas, though I've left cars sit up in the mountains of Colorado for 6-12 months and the gas was still

usable.

 

As far as T belts, I'll maybe check them but as they have perhaps 4000 miles on them (were replaced just prior to my purchase of car) I would highly doubt they'd suddenly break or jump timing from just sitting on my property.

Edited October 26, 201312 yr by SmashedGlass

SHE. LIVES. !!!!

 

It took awhile, but I got her running. Aside from the expected valve train noises from sitting, she's good as gold.

Poured some Seafoam in what gas was left in the tank, and a cap-full into the throttle body. Still took a good

ten minutes on and off cranking to get her to "go". I was fearing a blown fuel pump on top of everything as I 

could not hear mine at all when I keyed on (I'm working alone, can't turn key and lay under the back end at the

same time). Turns out, I just have the quietest fuel pump ever.

 

Now, I can begin doing all the lovely stuff I need to in order to bring her back to %100, like oil change, coolant flush, basically

everything flush