Hi all. A little more than a week ago I picked up an 87 SI as my new daily driver. It had a few issues when I got it (tires, no radio, and a wheel bearing which I'm fixing Monday) but I've solved all of those. Its a great car and gets almost double the gas mileage of my other beast in the driveway. However a couple days ago it started having a strange issue.

When I'm driving the car will bog down and misfire like crazy. I have to floor it and it spits and sputters and sometimes I can get it running again, but if I have to come to a stop it will die or if I'm already at a stop it will start idling super rough and any gas input will make it die. After it dies it refuses to crank for a while. If I crank it like normal, the tachometer jumps around all over the place, and it won't start. However I can sometimes get it to crank by holding the gas pedal to the floor. When I do this though, the car stutters and misfires and pops something fierce. I can also smell fuel and when its running like this there is some pretty foul, gas scented smoke coming from the tail pipe. The whole time all this is happening the PGM-FI light hasn't come on and there are no codes on the ecu. I think its either the distributor or the fuel pressure regulator, but I'm not sure. I may have overlooked something. I did the main relay fix, checked the main grounds in the engine bay, and have checked some other miscellaneous things. Is there anything I might be missing?

Also today I was tinkering with it, and with the key in and in the run position I can hear the fuel pump turn on and prime, but it doesn't shut off after the normal priming time of a couple of seconds. I'm kind of at a loss here and I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions.

 

Bad water temp switch. Its located under your distributor.