Recently purchased a 1996 camaro rs 3.8 5 speed. best car ive ever drove! then one night i got home late. shut the car off, then rTealized i had to go back outt to the store. so i ran out fired her up only to have a 1996 camaro "boat engine" it was sluggish as hell, didnt think to much of it so i drove up the road.. by time i got to end of road i had smoked out the whole block. then my engine light came on. so i invested money in a live data/ odb2 reader.

- mass airflow low input ( replaced it )
-Tps low input ( replaced )
- IAC ( replaced )
and bank one sensor one

AFTER ALL THAT I GO TO START IT AND THE STARTER DIES

so ive boughten a new starter and replaced everything requested by odb2 and a lil more.
- plug wires
-coil packs
-plugs
-throttle body

and also i researched it and somone wrote blown headgasket, the only issue i have with that is, why does the smoke smell like PURE gas?

also it blew a hole in my cat right after it and i crawled under only to find gasoline dripping out bottom, maybe mixed with condensation or somthing.


well anyone that can help please do im at my wits end and connnot afford another vehicle. thank you all for your time

- chris

 

Sounds like something weird with the fuel system is wrong. Like it's getting WAY to much fuel. Maybe try to remove all the injectors and inspect them. But I don't think a head gasket would cause those problems but check your oil for anti-freeze. I am no expert but I'm just trying to help.

 

Wow that is a lot going on. You "blew" a hole in the cat? and raw gas came out of that hole?? By "blew" do you mean the car did it or you did it with a drill? Those cats are pretty thick. It does sound like you car was overheating when you got back into it. Cars will reach their hottest temp about 8 minutes after they are shut off. So if you car was all most over heating when you shut it off it could be a problem 5 minutes later. Blown head gasket will blow coolant out of the tail pipe and it can force coolant out the overflow. If it just overheated it would be just forcing it out of the overflow.

If you forced an overheating car down the road to the point it would not go anymore there are a lot of parts that could have been damaged. Heat can effect almost every part of the motor.

Take a nice clean pc a paper towel. Use your dipstick and wipe the oil on the towel, get a bright light and a magnifying glass and see if there is any metal in the paper towel. That would explain why your old starter was not strong enough to crank the car anymore.

 

OKay yeahthenight I turned it back on it forced a crack after the cat I believe. Only odd part is the temp gauge works well and I've had thermostat replaced.. Hmmm I will do the oil chek now, I appreciate any tips also I will buy all new injectors if reasonably priced lol see if that fixed the mass amount of fuel smoke owing out of exhaust. As of today car will start but about 30 seconds later it starts smoking out of the cat, then after that it's a smoke bomb of fuel lol

 

I think as well you might have an injector problem but you could have a valve getting stuck as well and I will tell you why. As the camshaft turns the valves open and close. (That might be basic but I had to start off my conversation with that.) As the exhaust stroke begins to end, you will find a period where the exhuast valve and the intake valve in each cylinder are both open. This period is called valve overlap. In this period there is a bit of raw fuel that leaves the exhaust form the vaccuum that is created. This raw fuel helps with some emissions. What I am getting at is there might be a valve that could be stuck open and not compltely seating right on the cylinder head. This could be because of some carbon build up around the valves which is quite possible because of the age of the vehicle. Maybe some sea-foam or some other fuel additive could help you with this and possibly clean up the valves. Cant really hurt anything. Hope this helps!

 

Check the fuel pressure with a gage. Just to make sure the regulator did not go bad and allow the pressure to get too high. The excess fuel can foul plugs, cause misfires, and wind up in the cat causing it to overheat and destroy itself.