Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting Car won't start, please help!!!

I did a quick search but couldn't find anything quite like this so I'm hoping I didn't miss it. The car is stuck two hours from my house in Mankato, MN.(I'm in the cities)

So here is the problem: I've got a '99 'tour with V6 5speed, 36,xxx and every option. It was running fine when I turned it off, but 20min later when I started it the engine was missing badly and pushing the accelerator made the engine sound like it was going to kill. My first thought was that I need to choke it but that wouldn't work too well. The engine did kill after about a minute. Now when I try to start it the engine turns over, but won't start. Every once in a while it fires once, I think.(Rarely I guess)
- shouldn't be out of gas, guage is fine and I know I drove 50 easy hw miles right after putting in 3.6gal gas.(+1/4 tank)
- no engine service lights are on
- I think I looked at the correct fuses and they were fine
- car had no other problems, ran great all the way to redline

I've got the service manuals, but haven't had a chance to look at them. Got home after midnight and have a huge day at work today, then I get to figure out what to do. If you guys have any ideas I would greatly appreciate it!

Thanks, Jeff

Based on what you said, I would suspect bad gas. Add a can of dry gas, change the fuel filter & purge the fuel line. If that doesn't help, I'd think about a fuel pump replacement.

go back to the service station and find out if anyone else had problems and if so then this is your problem, bad gas... once a tennecco gas station had about 25 cars in their lot with white foam coming out of the carbs. dont know what they did, but the delivery truck just delivered the gas and these poor people got it.... it was a bad batch... or if not that did you pump disel for cars in the tank by mistake????

I wondered that too. But I the button I pushed was 89octane so probably not diesel. So if it is bad gas (was a 2 pump station in a tiny farm town) why was the car running fine before I shut it off? I was even idling it for a couple of minutes before I shut it off.

Any other ideas? I think I'm going to have to FedEx my key down to the shop i'm part in front of(convienent huh?). This is my wife's car right now and I'm trying to remember if the fuel pump is audible. I couldn't hear it last night when I turned on the ignition.