Weak fuel pump?

TED PRESS

MEMBER
1996 CHEVROLET SUBURBAN
V8
4WD
AUTOMATIC
24,500 MILES

My 1996 Chevy Suburban 3/4 ton 4 X 4 with 350 vortec and 242,000 miles will not start reliably. Sometimes I will try for days and not be able to start it. Other times it will start right up. It seems to start when the outside temp is COLD (below 50 deg F). When the car fails to start, I smell fuel like it is flooded. The local Chevy dealership looked at it twice and was unable to diagnose. They cleaned the injectors. During a time when it would not start, I was able to confirm spark at the wires. I am beginning to suspect the fuel pump is bad?

1 Reply

KASEKENNY

MECHANIC
18,907 POSTS

This does sound like a weak fuel pump so we need to follow that path to try and figure this out.

Here are a couple guides that will help with this:

https://youtu.be/dCjmRL3p4Cs

https://www.2carpros.com/articles/car-cranks-but-wont-start

At this point we are assuming this is a fuel pressure issue so we need to find that out by checking pressure using this guide:

https://www.2carpros.com/articles/how-to-check-fuel-system-pressure-and-regulator

I am attaching the process below from the manual that will run through this testing so we need to find out what we find with this.

Please let us know and we can go from there.

Thanks

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