Buffalo bite!!!
ever been nipped by a horse?
Shit hurts don’nit?
wellssss,,,,, on my way into the J.O.B. this AM, and Buffalo BIT ME!!! driving along just fine, no hitches glitches or sputters when suddenly, ZERO POWER,,, Nothing, no accelerator, The only reason the RPMs were still up was the transmission was in lockup (also known as TCC or high gear or any number of other loosely applied terms for the ‘Converter clutch was engaged’)
drifted to the side of the road, made a call, texted Son of Bossman and let him know I was having issues,,, and started roadside diag while awaiting my tow vehicle. First thing on my mind is “fuel pump finally gave up” and I have been expecting it too since I bought the truck, even went and bought one for the shelf because I knew it was just a matter of time. So, Buffalo bit me TWICE. Once out of neglect, the second time for being a twit.
it wasn’t the fuel pump.
it WAS the rotor button on the distributor crapping out. Spent a few hours doing the fuel pump to find “Crank no start” conditions still applied. Quick and dirty diag for a CNS, ‘the king is a FINK’ (carried over from my motorcycle days.) Fuel, Ignition, Nuetral Safety, Kill switch. Since Buffalo doesn’t have a kill switch, that narrows it down to three. Since the nuetral safety is located in the transmission selector, that kind of narrows it down to two. Since I just replaced the fuel pump with a known good one,,,,
start checking for spark. Coil is HOT, and I do mean HOT. Nice solid blue/white sparks jumping the gap on my HEI tester. ok, check at the plugs,,,,,,, zip, nada, not even a whiff of ozone,,,,, Pull the cap and I see the arc pattern burned into the top of the rotor button. Sparks are going straight to ground through the rotor,,,, In my time dealing with S10’s, there are usually some warning signs, not just sudden death like this time. Thats my excuse and I am sticking to it.
Did not have those on hand, and $35 later, I do, and now Buffalo is running smooth as silk, and fires up like near new. And my fuel gauge works again. (how I knew that the pump was gonna give up eventually as they are built as a unit.)
make assumptions, get bit!!! thats what Buffalo has been teaching me this last year. But,,,, I bit her back in a way too. Getting at the fuel pump is a misery on any Chevy S10, but she is a Crewcab, and that pump is NOT below the bed of the truck. So now,,, Her rear floorboard, just behind the rear seat, has a hole cut into it, right above the fuel pump, and a new snazzy aluminum plate to cover the hole. Makes a pump swap merely a pain, not a misery.
Dio's Workshop 
No fun getting bit, but good on ya for being unafraid to jump in and fix it yourself.
I feel sorry for the poor, dumb bastards that can’t put air in a tire, much less even identify a distributor!
Now, I don’t LIKE working on autos, but I can and I do when I hafta. I learned in the pre-internet days, but now with youtoobz you can find damn near anything down to specific models and their peculiar problems, so there is really no excuse. And great idea on the trap-door! I had that as a factory feature on a VW I owned several decades ago and thought that was a normal thing, cuz you know, it made sense. It wasn’t til a later GMC I owned I got the “whaddya mean I gotta drop the tank?!?” I think it should be a requirement for auto-design folks to work 2 years as a line mechanic before they’re allowed to design so much as a cup holder.
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January 16, 2023 at 6:01 pm
back when I actually made a living at this crap (right out of the Corps) I had a class ran by a design engineer (not an actual designer, but the guy that did the skull work from the final ideas) His comment was similar to yours, that the designers needed actual hands on. The engineers had the problem of squeezing the guts into that idea, and someitmes, things would get cut out because of costs: like access hatches and doors to critical parts,,,, Looking under the hood of some newer models, ain’t no way in hell you could pay me enough to work on them, let alone OWN one. My 2002 is about as ‘new’ as I am willing to go.
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January 16, 2023 at 6:45 pm
Your story reminds me of a very cold winter day when my sister-in-law’s car broke down not far from her house. It was getting fuel, but no spark at the plugs. Distributor cap, points, condensor and rotor all looked fine. Took a while to figure out that the distriuter shaft was broken in two, so the rotor wasn’t even moving when the engine was cranked.
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January 17, 2023 at 7:43 pm
that was the first thing I checked when I pulled the cap off. Had someone crank over the engine to make sure the rotor was turning. I have had an s10 shear the drive gear on the dist-shaft before.
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January 17, 2023 at 7:47 pm