Hey just picked up a 94 blazer s10 4.3 in Whistler, BC and when I bought it the guy said it had 'cold start issues'. Car drove fine when I test drove but that evening after finishing work I couldn't get a spark at all.

Had a local mechanic take a look the next day and had the ignition coil replaced, car fired up instantly after fitting however the next day, whilst the car was running perfectly I took it through a car wash and put in $50 worth of the middle octane gas. Immediately after the car wash and fill up the car showed signs of struggling, engine was spluttering and had stalled within 50m at the first lights. It continued to re start and then stall when revs dropped to low for about 10 minutes when it finally gave up and had to be towed home.

its been a couple of days since it happened and after work tonight will check if she starts, which is leading me to think my problem would be moisture in the distributor cap? If so I will clean it out and seal with a silicone bead. Is this the likely issue seeing as it was immediately after the car wash?

cheers!

 

Cap, rotor and plug wires. Might as well throw fresh plugs in while your at it. Might just be one wire arcing. Get it running and pop the hood at night. If you have a wire arcing you will see it. The water makes those problems worse.

 

cheers for the quick reply, it has new plugs and just tried after work and she's cranking stronger just not firing, I'm assuming from this the moisture had dried in the sun a little today. Will clean out the cap tomorrow and see if I can seal it and hopefully that solves it.

 

another thing to look at would be the throttle position sensor,cam sensor and egr/aic. All those would cause those issues to. If the check engine light is on you can flash it and check for codes. If the computer doesn't flash a code then it's going to be something that doesn't report to the computer directly,like fuel pump,spark plug etc. Good luck.