Thread: Urgent Help Required for Safety of Driving my car with problems

Turn the ignition on and go to the rear and see if you can hear the fuel pump running. Pat

A possibility I think is worth checking is the fuel pickup in the tank. Often these have a small mesh filter over the end of them to stop large particles of gunk or whatever in the tank from getting into the pipe. Sometimes this can just block up and no fuel can get through until you either pull it out and clean it or disconnect fuel pipe further up and blow back into tank. Mouth pressure often adequate. Had to fairly regularly do this with a tractor I operated once until tank was flushed out.

What can be a much more difficult problem to diagnose though is when the filter slowly blocks up while the motor is running but then when it and the suction stops some of the gunk falls off the filter. So then it can be started and will run until the filter blocks again. I have heard a claim that this frustrating problem can be deliberately created by a saboteur putting egg white into the fuel. Apparently will coagulate enough to slowly block filter, then fall off when motor stops.

Maybe also another possibility is like what happened with a truck (with petrol motor) I once had. The fuel pipe went into the top of the tank but it just had an open end on it near the bottom. Somehow a small piece of paper had got into the tank. With fuel sloshing around in moving vehicle, occasionally would pass close enough to pickup to get sucked onto and stuck on it. Then when motor stopped, would fall off again. Took a while to find the problem, then time consuming fiddly job before paper was successfully removed.