OK, time for round two...

[ZeroLux]

Quick question. Car is getting worse. Still not 100% sure on where the problem is. I've talked to a few gearheads around here that I know, and it seems the almost unanimous verdict is my fuel pump is failing. In an effort to hear more opinions on this: what are the typical symptoms of a failing fuel pump? Car cannot maintain speed, valve train chatters if it's revved too high under load, driving it for long distances makes it gradually decrease in power to the point that it's hard to hold at regular speed.

Would the car initially start up fine and degrade the longer it's driven if the pump were the problem? It just sounds a little bit off to me. I'd imagine it would have the issue all the time?

Anything? Thanks

Zero

[cygnus x-1]

Quick question. Car is getting worse. Still not 100% sure on where the problem is. I've talked to a few gearheads around here that I know, and it seems the almost unanimous verdict is my fuel pump is failing. In an effort to hear more opinions on this: what are the typical symptoms of a failing fuel pump? Car cannot maintain speed, valve train chatters if it's revved too high under load, driving it for long distances makes it gradually decrease in power to the point that it's hard to hold at regular speed.

Would the car initially start up fine and degrade the longer it's driven if the pump were the problem? It just sounds a little bit off to me. I'd imagine it would have the issue all the time?

Anything? Thanks

Zero


Possibly. My parents' old minivan did that. It was fine driving around at slow speeds but after a few minutes on the highway it would start to surge and slow down. Pulling off to the side of the road and sitting for a few minutes would let it recover and it would run fine again until you drove on the highway for awhile.
The fuel pump was overheating and slowing down from the extra friction in the internals. A new pump fixed the problem. Does your pump sound noisy at all?

C|

[ZeroLux]

Does your pump sound noisy at all?

:lol: Hard to tell really, the whole car is noisy. :lol:

I'll have to check that out in a bit. I did make some progress on her tonight however, found a few things that seemed a bit off that I am going to investigate further. Related question: the secondary valves on the intake that are vacuum actuated at 5k rpm's... are those supposed to be OPEN before 5k or CLOSED before 5k and THEN OPEN after the 5k mark? I took a close look inside the intake and was happy with my findings... nice and shiny clean, but those extra valves closest to the head were almost full 90 open. I used a screwdriver to prop the arm from the actuator on the drivers side to what I assume is the 'closed' position (car off of course) and went back and looked in the intake via the throttle body and they had closed. After that, I reassembled what I had undone and started the car, FINALLY FIXED MY STUPID IDLE PROBLEM (YAY!) and manually moved the arm on that actuator. No change in engine rpm or noise. Open or closed they seemed to have no real effect. Maybe it's conditional and the pcm needs to see the TPS at a certain angle then it injects more fuel? :dunno: I wish I had a vacuum pump handy so I could check these things easier without having to pick it apart in my head. I'm sure the FSM is handy when you have all the right tools to check on things. :uh:

Anyway, bottom line at the moment is I burning on my 38th hour straight without sleep, I am punchy, apparently in an emoticon mood :omg: and those secondaries are open 24/7 from the looks of it.

Could it be secondaries open past 5k when they are not supposed to be and the engine tossing the fuel mix off and making things drive pooie? I'm a bit fried right now and my night is far from over so I apologize if I've asked a bunch of noobish or moronic questions.

Thanks a ton for all the input so far guys!

Zero

[Strugglebucket]

The secondaries won't cause the kind of problems you're describing. But fyi, they are supposed to be closed below 5k and open @5k. The actuator is spring loaded and held closed by vacuum, so if you were looking at it with the engine off they would have been open. But if you look at it with the engine running it should be closed.

I'd try replacing the fuel filter first and see if that helps. The only time I ever had a problem where the car would start up fine and then get worse the longer it was driven was when I had an injector going bad. But it would stumble a lot.