JayTheGent

I love that color! Welcome!

Simple... Just don't do it. I am now on my third Duralast distributor from Autozone. They sell them with a lifetime warranty for $220 and are complete junk. I think the issue is the heatsink which is responsible for transferring heat. When the car gets hot, it doesn't transfer heat fast enough and shorts out the camshaft position sensor. Car will just continue to crank. This is not the only occurrence of product issues and I would altogether stay away from the Duralast brand. I am on the third distributor after tracking down and replacing everything I (and the forum) could think of. They offered to refund me, but I need to be able to drive while waiting for the next one to arrive. The newest one is clearly manufactured by a different company so maybe it isn't complete junk. It has a blue wire instead of the black and yellow one. I will keep you guys posted. I just wanted to let everyone know to avoid this brand!

It was not the fuel injector. I did have a leaking fuel injector which was the cause of the popping sound, but the not start issue still remained. It was... drum roll... the distributor... the same distributor I have replaced twice. I will be doing a listing about it... It is the Duralast (AutoZone branded) one.

You're the man, thank you, sir.

Hahaha I've heard of that happening! I try to stick with Fel-Pro for all of my gasket! Used a little bit of red silicon and it went on like a champ. I decided to just do the following: -new intake manifold gasket (upper) -new fuel injector -new valve cover gaskets 50 bucks (thanks amazon prime) and two hours later, she seems to be running great. I went on a bunch of quick trips since that's usually when the symptoms show and she fired right up every time. Also cleaned out quite a bit of mud from the engine bay! Crazy how much junk gets under there. I'll give her another week before I say it's completely solved, but I'm pretty sure that was the problem. Thanks a bunch for all the help guys! One thing I have noticed is that I'm about 100 RPMs higher at idle, I think I'm going to adjust the throttle position sensor in the morning to drop back down to 750.

Thanks, Rebel. Whenever you got a sec.

Exactly! You'd be looking at scrap value if you didn't fix it and that's around 300 bucks. If you were in the NW I'd just buy it from you and fix it myself. Even if you wanted to switch to a different truck, you'd have no money to put towards it. Instead, fix it, sell it for 4k and get whatever truck you want. The repairs at a shop would be well over 1500 bucks (at least in Oregon).

Threes no real way to tell how long it'll last. Honestly, you should give it a try. A decent head gasket kit will come with the seals you need. You mind as well change the timing belt too. 150 bucks and a solid weekend of work will save you thousands of dollars. There's a guy on youtube that posted a bunch of videos on the process... just throwing it out there.

Years ago, I unbolt ed this bracket from some unknown locatiom, could someone please tell me where it goes? https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B15J3Ds0Knf8Mlp5UHhic3Q4clU/view?usp=drivesdk

I second this... 160k is fairly low for this motor, replace the seals and she should take car of you for many more years to come.

So it wasn't quite as easy as I'd hoped. Ended up having to pull the intake plenum off to get to the leaky injector off. The heads of the screws holding the injectors in stripped so I had to "extract" them. Ordered a new injector, intake manifold gasket and valve cover gaskets (figured I'd kill two birds since the manifold is already off). Started thinking about doing the head gasket and crankshaft seal while I've gone this far. I replaced the timing belt a while back but couldn't afford a new tensioner. I was thinking that if I did the tensioner on Friday, I could unbolt the exhaust and pull the heads too. With nearly 215k on the motor, I'd hate to put the manifold back on and do the tensioner, then have the gasket give out in 15k when I could have spent the extra hours to avoid it...

You guys are rock solid at this stuff! Had the issue again today and quickly started pulling plugs. I'd pull a plug, check for fuel, reinstall and repeat. Plug 3 was soaked in gasoline, the rest were bone dry. Swapped the plug for a dry one and she fired right up. Luckily the injector for plug three is exposed. Next step is to do what you recommended. I'm basically going to remove the injector and prime the pump to see if there is a leak. I will keep you posted!

Hey guys, thanks for responding! Sorry it took me a few days to get back to you. Slight loss of coolant due to a crack in my radiator. Patched it temporarily until I can hit the scrap yard and pull another. No oil consumption, I change the oil like clockwork and I have been short. Fuel mileage is right around 16 mpg, which is where it has been since I bought it. It is strange that it only happens on hot starts. I have driven until hot, turned it off and immediately tried to start it and she fires right up. But.... if I let it sit for more than 10 minutes or so, it has the problem. Also, this video didn't show the whole process, I tried cranking 2 or 3 times before I started recording. I think you are on the right track, because when it does fire up, I smell a huge impulse of exhaust... that made me think there was too much fuel being dumped in. If it is a leaky injector, how do I check this? If the motor was cold, I could pull the plugs and check for wet ones, but because the issue only occurs when it is hot, I would imagine that by the time I checked all plugs, the fuel would evaporate. Could I slightly advance the timing to maybe 10 degrees btdc? This would get the plugs firing a little faster, not letting them get over saturated? On that note, could it potentially be the fuel pressure regulator? To check the vacuum line, is it recommended to pull off the intake plenum? It looks like a pretty tight fit back there. Thanks again for all the help!

Hey all, Still having the weird noise occasionally on hot starts... Here's a link to a youtube video showing what I'm talking about: Please let me know if you have any ideas... possible culprits that I could think of are: -out of time... again (I'll check tonight) -starter -distributor... again -temp sensor

Looked around and found what might be a decent solution, matches some of my symptoms... coolant temp sensor? Ecm thinks it's a cold start even though the engine is hot. Tries dumping too much fuel, I relieve the fuel pressure and she starts like a champ... makes sense to me. That sensor looks like a PITA to get off. Think I'm gonna change the water pump while I'm in there since I didn't have the funds to do it when I did the timing belt (I was a super broke college student... now I'm just a kinda broke college student). Thanks again for all the help guys.