New Starting problem

[flyeri]

This one is a little unusual. Your ideas are appreciated. My daughter calls and says her car (95 Camry 2.2) won't start. She said she turns the key, lights come on on the instrument panel, it turns over, fires and runs for 1 second then dies. She does this 2-3 times before she calls me. It has been sitting for 20 minutes at the shopping center when this happens. BTW she has driven this car 50k miles in 2.5 years so she knows when something is wrong and how it normally runs.

It takes me 30 minutes to get there and it starts right up. We drive around for a few minutes and stop at Advance Auto and I put in a bottle of "dry gas" just in case it had some water in the tank. It has run fine for three days and I doubt the dry gas had anything to do with it.

My first thought was that the fuel pump had failed. The usually work fine until they are dead and then they are just dead, and I can't figure how it could have quit once. I drove it tonight and it ran great. Any ideas are welcome.

[hill8570]

Hard to tell with an intermittent, especially without knowing if the problem was spark, gas, or air.

Did she try giving it throttle ("hit the gas pedal") while it was doing this? It's kind of instinctive with most people, but never hurts to ask. Assuming she did, it probably isn't the IAC, since hitting the gas should give it enough air to keep running.

IMHO, the ignition system is the best source of intermittent problems. Maybe that flippin' coil -- it always finds new and different ways to fail intermittently.