I have had a bunch of these dandy cars. Currently have an 1980 Volare with the slant six-cylinder engine. There is two times I have this same problem. One is when the car was fairly new, I used to purposely run it out of gas, then put in a measured gallon to check the fuel mileage. (Turned out to be 28.3 mpg consistently). The problem was the fuel pump will not suck gas from the tank when the engine is just at cranking speed. I always had to pour a little down the carburetor. Due to the long intake manifold runners, it is almost impossible to flood the engine when doing this. With about 1/4 cup of gas, the engine would run a good four or five seconds. Sometimes I had to do that twice, but it never failed to get the gas to the engine, then it would be fine.
The second problem was the gas would evaporate out of the float bowl overnight. It got collected in the charcoal canister. If I drove the car every day, it just had a long crank time to fill the bowl, then the engine would fire right up. Now it sits for months at a time and can require dumping a little gas down the carburetor a few times. There was a service bulletin for that. It involved cutting that fat hose that goes from the carburetor to the charcoal canister, and installing a check valve. I have that valve but never bothered to install it.
If you were inside the gas tank, there is a round screen on the end of the pick-up tube that can become clogged. Typically they cause a gradual loss of power after driving about ten miles. After sitting on the side of the road in a pile of tears, they stretch out again in about five minutes, and let enough gas through to drive a few more miles. That screen used to cost around three dollars. I had to replace them on a different Volare, and on a 1978 LeBaron wagon.
Oct 13, 2018 at 3:59 PM
