Bikeboy57 wrote:
Hi April,
Lets do some things to narrow down the search. First, you said it is a tbi engine. Cool, that means that there is a computer, primitive by today's standards, that controls the engine. Lets see if we can cut the problem in half, whether it is fuel or electronic.
If I read your posts correctly, it cranks, runs 30 seconds and dies. Every time? Is that behavior consistent? The answer is important.
When the engine dies, does it die suddenly or does it sputter and die?
All computer controlled car engines start in a fuel enriched mode for the first seconds, and then convert to a preprogammed fuel map. It sounds to me like that when your engine computer is converting from the fuel enriched start to the fuel map that the engine dies. The fuel map in a late 80s GM would be based on engine temp, air temp, and rpm. If the computer doesn't detect one of those sensors, or the rpm sensor, it will shut the engine down because it doesn't know what to do. First order of business is to find all those sensors and simply unplug them, squirt contact cleaner on the connections, and plug them back in. Even better would be to have the codes read on the computer while the engine misbehaves. Even those era computers will interface with a code reader.
So that's the electrical side. If the engine cranks fine, dies suddenly everytime at thirty seconds, I am not suspecting fuel problems. Will the engine rev up during that thirty second? If it dies when you rev it, then it may be fuel. Two other posters have suggested to spray starting fluid into the intake to see if you can force it to run. If it dies when you are doing this any way, then you have eliminated fuel as the culprit.
Try to get the codes read, the hundred bucks you will spend for a code reader will pay for itself by the time you replace the second "guess at it' part.
The older OBD can usually be read with a paperclip and the internet to decipher what the blinks on the CEL mean. Look it up: might save you a few bucks on a "Code Scanner"
