I'm going to preface this by saying that I'm a young woman with only nominal knowledge of cars, and this is my first car, so I understand if I come off as dumb. But I LOVE my Blazer, and I'm an excellent learner. I really, really need some advice!

My Blazer is a 1994 S10 Tahoe LT, and the man who owned it before me took excellent care of it. Many of the major parts on the car have been replaced, and it only has 151k miles on it.

But since I bought it, I've had intermittent trouble getting it to start. Some days it starts immediately, and others it takes ten seconds or more to start. Several months ago, the Blazer was getting incredibly difficult to start (sometimes taking 20 seconds or more before it would go), and the check engine light came on. The next day, the light went off again, and I didn't have any more trouble.

In the past month or so, I've had it once or twice simply fail to start the first time--the second time I try to start it, it works fine. And then...

Yesterday, I drove my car all morning with no trouble, and took it through the car wash. I parked it at home and went in the house for a few hours, and when I came back out it wouldn't start at all. It was turning over fine, but it was pretty apparent that it wasn't getting any fuel (I didn't touch the gas, by the way). We continued to try it on and off for the rest of the day, both with and without pumping the gas (following the directions in my manual, of course), but couldn't get a different result.

The man who helped me yesterday and has a lot of experience with cars told me that it seemed like the fuel pump had gone out--the starting issues were relatively new and he thought that even though the check engine light hasn't come on that it was probably indicative of the pump failing (which, when I googled it, is supposedly a common problem with this model).

When the guy came this morning to tow it to the mechanic, I told him what the problem was and he got in the car and started it without any trouble. We turned it off and started it again several times while he was there. He said that about 150k is when the pump would go out on the Blazer, and that he didn't know what the problem was since I hadn't flooded it (no gas, remember). He went on his way and, for now, the Blazer is starting fine.

However, I'm on my own for most of my working hours, and I can't have my car failing. The other problem is that even though I did my research and found that replacing the pump should be approximately $400 to repair, the mechanic quoted me at around 800. So if I can do anything to fix it on my own, that would be ideal--and I really, more than anything, need to figure out what the heck is wrong with it.

Help!

 

the pump and the spider injector are suspect. Signs of a failiing/leaking fuel spider injector is poor running, hardest to start after parking for only a couple hours. Fuel smells like gas. May black smoke at start. The leaking fuel leaks into the engine and makes it run incredibly rich. Check for washed out spots under the upper intake. If the pump is going out its will run lean, you may have to cycle the key a couple times to start after sitting.