Toyota Nation Forum banner

Engine won't start

928 Views 5 Replies 4 Participants Last post by  79Rolla_Liftbac
I have a 79 liftback that I can't get started. It has been sitting for a while and I'm pretty sure it is the carb but thought I would ask for suggestions. I have replaced the plugs, cap, rotor, and coil. The car turns over but will not fire. I drained all of the fuel and added new gas and it fired up right away. I drove it for a few miles came home turned off the car and it fired up again. I left it idle for a min and it choked out and died and now it will not start again. I am going to rebuild the carb but thought I would see if any one thought it might be something else like the distributor or something.

Any advice is greatly appreiciated!
1 - 6 of 6 Posts
Start from basics; spark,fuel and air. It doesn't sound like a carb problem, so I will make sure before you get your hands on it. I am more suspicous of your fuel lines and fuel pump.
might be the automatic choke.

Cant be the spark, because he started it and drove it.
My bet is that the carb needs a good cleaning. does it have auto choke or manual choke.. if its manual choke, I would leave it running for a little while with the choke on till the carb cleans itself. My second bet, your fuel filter is probably bad and clogged with crap, I would replace that if I was you so that the fuel goes thru properly.
The fuel filter is new and the previous owner installed an electric fuel pump. Plenty of fuel getting to the carb. As for the Choke I am not sure. I will have to take a look. What is the best way to tell? I am pretty unfamiliar with carbs. I do know that there is no lever or switch or anything like that inside the car that would be used to activate the choke.
New updates. I forgot to mention before that when I try to start the car, after stop turning the engine over, when I go to turn the key off the engine kind of coughs and the whole thing shakes. If I turn the key on and off again with out turning the engin over again it will do the same thing a couple of times. Does this make sense to anyone? Also, today I checked to see if I was getting any spark to the sparkplugs and found out that I am not. The only thing that I have not replaced is the distributor. Does this sound like it could be the problem or am I just stuck checking all of the wiring?
1 - 6 of 6 Posts
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top