Good morning, My blazer has had a skipping problem that I tracked down to the coil wire. But it still stumbles or staggers. It's acting like it runs out of fuel briefly. Has anybody else encountered this?

 

Is your check engine light on? If it is get the codes read at an autozone or someplace like that. Then come back here with the codes you get.
If your light is not on make sure its not burned out. When you first turn the key it should light up with all the other ones.

 

The light is not on, there are no codes at all. I was getting a code for multiple cylinder skip, that is why I changed the coil wire. Since then no light.

 

I said earlier it was like it runs out of gas. It is more like it cuts out. It is much worse on take off. When it shifts to second it is less noticable but is still there through all the speeds. Also having an issue with the 4X4 selector, the light comes on and goes off intermittently and it does not always want to change in to 4wd and is very hard to get back to 2wd.

 

Go get some Sea foam and put about half the can in the fuel tank. Make sure the tank is at least half full. Remove the vacuum line from the brake booster while someone starts the engine and pour the remainder into the line slowly. Turn the engine off for 15 minutes. Replace the line to the booster. Restart the engine and bring rpm up to 1000 until white smoking out exhaust clears. This should help clean the intake and the Sea foam in the tank will aid in removing any water that may have gotten in. I'm not saying this will solve this problem however it should only cost around $10.00 and will clean the injectors. If the problem persists continue diagnosis.

 

Can you give a little history, basically was this a slow building problem or did it just start. Do you have any idea if a new fuel pump has been put in since 98, I would expect so.
C33 has a good idea looking at fuel clean-up but it kind of sounds like there are a couple of things going on.
Hard back to 2w is real common, GM put out a tsb on it, some kind of adjustment, when mine get's stuck I just drop it to neutral, roll to the side of the road foot on brake toss it into R then roll off and the front gear drops out. 4X4 on the fly is kind of a joke!
Anyway unless your running problems came on exactly at the same time as your 4x4 thing there not related.
Go to the BF homepage, in the google box put in "fuel pressure leak down then ignition switch" (not at the same time).
Also, this is not a question to bust your chop's, but on a 98 with unspecified miles have the cap, rotor, plugs and wires ever been changed.
Don't do it now because if that were the exact problem you would be tossing a code somewhere in the PO300's.
Crap, another question, how many times have you cycled the motor since you changed the coil wire?

Anyone else?

 

Thx Spittybays,
it was a slow build up, the feuel pump was changed a year and a half ago. New ignition switch in june because of an earlier problem. cap wires plugs rotor about a year ago. engine cycled through about 10 times since coil wire change. About 120,000 miles on her (200,000kms)

 

Chevy 33 what is sea foam?

 

Real brief the leak down is the start of a test on your fuel pump and spyder injection system. These are the two most common problems on these guys. Rather then me go through the whole deal, pictures are worth a thousand words. Go to youtube and put in s10 or blazer fuel problems or testing. There are like twenty on there that will give you a pretty good idea on how to do it. You can get a fuel pressure gauge loaned to you from autozone with a deposit or buy one for 40- 50 bucks.
These trucks are real fuel pressure sensitive so it's not a bad idea to own one from Wal-Mart or were ever. If your handy you can make one up from a plumbing supply house but it isn't worth it.
Sea-Foam is a product that was first made for winterizing marine engines, its a mineral oil base with some voc solvents added in. It crossed over into the auto market when people figured out it was good and relatively gentle at dissolving varnish deposits.
Pretty good stuff actually.