First of all, I've used this forum for a lot of information over the years and am thankful to everyone who has posted answers or fixes. I don't think I'm overstating it when I say that you all have saved me thousands of dollars that I didn't have to spend, and I hope my contribution helps someone else.

I have a 2001 2WD, 2DR Blazer LS with about 90K miles. A few months ago I noticed that it took a few more cranks to start than usual. Instead of starting after 2 - 3 cranks, it would be more like 7 - 8 cranks. At the time there were no other problems or symptoms.

For some reason I just ignored the problem, which was probably because I only thought about it for a second or two every day. Then the truck would start and I was on the road and thinking about something else.

About six weeks after the first hard start I had the truck die on me while I was taking a coworker home. It died right as I turned in to his driveway with no sputtering or anything like that. I only noticed it died because the steering and brakes lost power. There was no SES light, and the truck restarted on the first or second crank. I made it the rest of the way home with no issues.

Over the next week I drove it to work every day with only a few instances where it would die or come close to dying at idle. I was driving with two feet at red lights to keep the RPMs up, and if I did that it wouldn't die.

The next week I noticed that it was starting to run kinda rough at highway speeds, as if it was missing a little bit. All the while I'm not getting any SES or other indicator lights on the dash.

The first day after it started acting up on the freeway, it died on my way home from work and ran very rough after I restarted it. If you've ever driven a car that had an O2 sensor or catalytic converter fail, it was kinda like that: jerking, stalling, misfiring. It was almost like an automobile version of a mechanical bull.

I pulled over into a McDonald's and called my wife to come follow me home the rest of the way, but I didn't even make it 100 yards before the problems started again. I worked up a little bit of momentum and was able to coast into the parking lot at a shopping center, where we had AAA come and tow it home for us.

My initial thought was that I needed some tune-up items like cap & rotor, plug wires, etc. The guy at the parts store (who seems to think selling batteries makes him a technician) tried to tell me it was an O2 sensor, so I decided to not do or buy anything until I could gather more information. I didn't want to just start changing things.

Based on what I read here, I decided that I should do the normal tune-up things as well as look at the EGR valve, the ICM, ignition coil and mass airflow sensor.

I cleaned the EGR (not dirty or sticking), had the ICM verified good at Autozone, replaced the ignition coil for $20 or $30, and thoroughly cleaned the MAF sensor along with replacing the air filter element. This gave a minor improvement, but the problem was still there.

The distributor cap had lots of calcification on the posts, and one of them was kinda black and had a flat spot on one side. The button looked pretty gnarly too, so I thought I had found the source of the problem. I replaced the cap & rotor with the Accel performance versions, but this did not fix the problem 100%. It fixed it well enough for me to drive a few miles to the oil change place, but then it ran rough on the drive home and I knew there was something else wrong.

At this point I thought the distributor needed to be replaced, but decided to change the spark plugs and wires first to see what effect that would have. It ran a little bit better after new plugs and wires, but I could still feel the occasional bump like it was trying to miss.

My thinking at this point was that my original suspicions of it being a distributor issue were correct. I ruled out exhaust and fuel because of a few different reasons:

1. An exhaut issue (O2 sensor, etc) that was causing it to stall shouldn't also cause hard starting, since those are two different conditions (hot engine vs. cold engine) and I don't see how a downstream sensor could interfere with the initial point of ignition.

2. The fuel pump seemed like a possibility, except I halfway tested it by letting it cycle several times before turning the key all the way to start the engine. I read here that doing that would make sure fuel was available as well as build a little pressure in the system. Doing this had no effect on how many times the engine had to turn over before starting, so I ruled out fuel delivery.

So at this point I was convinced it was an issue with the distributor. Yesterday I pulled it and found that the gear on the end looked perfect, so I resigned myself to buying a whole new distributor.

Before I went to the store I held the dizzy in my hands and spun the shaft with my finger to watch how it turned and get a better understanding of how the part did it's job in the engine. I had heard people talk about the pick up coil on the distributor, but I didn't know what it was.

As I inspected the distributor I saw the two torx screws on the pick up coil and decided to take that part off since I was about to buy a new unit anyway. After the pick up coil was removed I noticed that the magnetized block closest to the electrical connector was covered with rusty iron filings, like it had an orange afro or something.

I cleaned the rusty metal hairs from the pick up, but then saw that the rubber insulator or seal (whichever it is) looked scorched and slightly melted on the top side. The bottom side looked OK.

I decided at this point to just change the pick up coil since the distributor gear looked perfect, so I went to Autozone and spent $30 on a new pick up coil and mounting gasket for the distributor. After 15 minutes everything was re-installed and ready for a test drive.

I'm happy to say that the engine fired right up and didn't show any of the previous symptoms during my hour-long test drive. Before I couldn't even make it out of my neighborhood without it acting funny.

Sorry for the extremely long post, but maybe my experience will be helpful to someone else. People who don't want to read, don't have to.

Plug Wires and Spark Plugs: about $70
ICM Testing: Free
Ignition Coil: $29 (I think)
EGR Cleaning: $4 can of carb cleaner, $1 gasket
Mass Air Flow Cleaner: $4 or $5
Performance Cap & Rotor: about $80
Air Filter Element: $13 at walmart
Fuel Injector Cleaner: $5
Distributor Pick Up Coil: $32 w/lifetime warranty ($29 for one year)
Distributor Mounting Gasket: $1
Oil Change: $56

Total: $296

I could have spent less than $100 for a standard cap & rotor and new pick up coil and fixed the problem, but the other things don't hurt either. I also suspect that cleaning the rusty hairs from the pickup would have helped the problem, which is something I would recommend to someone in a similar situation who is strapped for cash and can't afford to buy parts.

You're supposed to remove the distributor to remove the pick up coil, but I think some mass air flow sensor cleaner and a shop rag would allow you to clean the pick ups without doing anything more than taking off the cap & rotor.

One other note about removing the distributor. I used a craftsman 1/4" drive ratchet with a #10 metric socket (also craftsman) on the mounting bolt. It was very hard to break free, so I took a long box wrench and put the circle end on the handle of the ratchet so I could use both hands and pull from the front for better leverage. It was difficult to turn the ratchet in that small space, so once the bolt was loosened I used my fingers to turn the socket itself until the distributor pulled free.

As far as distributor installation, I hand tightened the mounting bolt with the socket in my fingers, then used the ratchet to tighten it all the way. I used a little dab of blue loctite on the bolt, although there wasn't any on it when I took it out.

I probably won't be on the forum much since my ride is running fine now and I only allocate my time to the car when necessary. I just wanted to come out of lurk mode to share and hopefully help someone save some time, money and/or frustration. Message me if you have questions about a similar problem and I'll try to help. But I'm just a shadetree mechanic. The rest of the week I trade ag commodities.

Thanks to Kyle and others.

-Brent

 

Glad you got it fixed and thank you for the detailed explanation!