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There was water in the gas tank!

It took me a few days of complete wondering, tinkering and quite a bit of "patience," diagnosis and sleep time. I'd have dreams of my car stalling on the middle of nowhere. I once banged my head against the steering wheel from sheer frustration. I kicked the tires a couple of times yesterday. I even kicked the back of my bumper and put a little shoe scuff mark on it. On my good day off work, I used a vacuum gauge, and mostly my fuel pressure gauge. This went from taking off the cap, rotor and ignition coil out to test, blaming the fuel pump and taking that out also to inspect, replacing the fuel pump sock, the the FPR, the replacement of the FPR hose, the removal and cleaning of my throttle body, the O2 sensor, the TPS sensor, the 5 hours of reading the Helms.

Early this morning, I tested the car out with the fuel pressure gauge hooked up once again and taped to the windshield for a nice little drive around the block. Gave it a little throttle and this time it stalled right in my driveway. When restarted, it would run roughly at 400 rpms and in about 20 seconds would die. Restarted it again, same rough idle. It would die instantly if you pressed on the gas pedal. Fuel pressure was still normal at 44 psi the exact second it died. God damn, I thought...

I decided to give up and take the fuel pressure gauge off. Of course I have to bleed out the fuel pressure to take it off. The car was still in the on position meaning their was still pressure at the fuel rail from the fuel pump repriming. I ran in the house and got a clean dry mason jar and bled off the fuel pressure gauge into the jar through the fuel pressure gauge gas drain tubing. Filled up the jar halfway full with gasoline and I noticed a few clear blobs at the bottom of the jar. Whatdaya know, that was water!

There were a couple of water blobs in the 6 oz of gasoline I collected out of the fuel rail and one of them looked to be as big as 1/4th inch wide. I'd say there were about 5 ccs of water in my fuel rail at the moment. No wonder the car would stall on part throttle because of simple physics; the water in the gas tank gets pushed to the back from acceleration and the fuel pump sucks it up right where that little yellow "boat" at the bottom of the gas tank is. It is there for the fuel pump to sit at and also prevents the gasoline from sloshing too much and prevents the fuel pump from sucking air when the fuel is low and the car is cornering or accelerating hard. Water is heavier that gas so it sinks to the bottom of the tank getting sucked by the fuel pump first. Then goodbye drivability and stall out on the throttle!

Putting a 12 oz bottle of "dry gas"/fuel line antifreeze or what is technically called pure, anhydrous isopropyl alcohol solved the problem. It helps water dissolve/emulsify into the gasoline and basically "eats" up 5 times its weight in water.

Needless to say, the car today was driven 146 miles today with not a single hint of lag, hesitation, stumbling, chuggling, coughing or stalling. Was up and around downtown Orlando the whole day and the car only stalled when I wanted it to. In order to stall the car, I would have to switch off the ignition.

 

Glad you figured it out .

 

How did water get into the gasoline?

 

In the past couple of days, this thing has cause me a bunch of frustration. The funny thing about it is that not once have I called AAA. If I got a dollar each time I cussed out the Vette when it died, I'd have more than enough money to run to the used car dealership and snag a good condition C5 and leave this one on the side of the road for dead. If I got $10 per time I slammed my head on the dash or kicked the tire, I'd have enough money to leave it at a dealership and get it fixed. I'd have to use the ramaining 1% on 12 pack of good beer, which I'd certainly love to drink right now.

 

When I was taking out the fuel pump for inspection, I noticed 3 of the bolts side-by-side on the tank holding the fuel pump assembly were kinda looser than the rest. It might not have been tight enough to seal the gasket completely. My rubber boot is dry with a good amount of dry rot cracks. I filled this bitch up 3-4 days ago and then it started stalling. Could also be just a bad tank of gas. It also could either be from the late night sprinklers on my yard or my enemies. I left the car outside overnight last week in the middle of my garage cleaning session.

 

How did the resistor bit have anything to do with this problem, Im not following...

 

Oh, it stalled twice with that thing and I was about to leave the car on the road for dead and walk home. I basically idled it home. Couldn't post about it here yesterday because I was too pissed off to think rationally.

The resistor helped the idle somewhat, but now a whole lot.

 

 

 

glad you found it Dude, using a fuel additive to remove water is usally one of the first things I do-funny, I've had my share of it here in the Pac. Northwest, and not just in my vette.

 

I hope water is my problem too.
Good to hear it's running properly again.

 

Vette still running fine and as healthy as a horse. I also found out why my Vette hunted for idle the day I got it. Even the day I got the car, my stock TB was from an 85-88 TPI system. So is my BBK that I have on the car now. I did Jim Mason's TB drilling mod which in turn converted my 85-88 BBK TPI TB into an 89 and up TB. 85-88 TPI TBs don't work correctly if installed on a later TPI setup. Even the plenums are a little different! Hopefully people will get this one day and figure out if they have the wrong TB.