Troubleshooting Tips for Cars -1

A guide to D.I.Y car troubleshooting.
If you are having trouble with your car hopefully i can help you to diagnose some of the most common and easy to solve issues, and possibly save you some money for a rainy day.

So lets begin with the basics and we will work from here in the coming articles:

Almost every engine requires three things to function - air,fuel and fire (some of the exceptions include rocket engines and some pulse jet engines, but that is another days work).

If either of these three is missing or interrupted for whatever reason, the engine will cease to function.This in fact is the main cause of the vast majority of car trouble - an upset in the flow of fuel,a change in the ratio of fuel/air mixture or a problem with the ignition coil circuitry and components.

Lets investigate some of the possible causes for an upset to the flow of fuel. We will start from the source of the fuel,the fuel tank and work our way toward the business end,the engine.
The most obvious one i can think of is......there is no fuel,but i doubt you are that stupid,are you? Go on,check the fuel gauge and come back to me (or not)!!

Ok, so it is not the fuel supply. Next under the microscope is the fuel lines, an easy way to check these is to turn over the engine a couple of times and see of you get a strong odour of fuel or a patch of fuel on the ground. I would strongly doubt this to be a cause as the fuel lines are well out of the way of any damage and are usually still intact when the rest of the car is on its deathbed.

Next up is be the fuel pump,this in my opinion would be the greatest culprit of any fuel supply problem. The fuel pump is essentially a hermetically sealed electric motor that sucks the fuel out of the tank and into the carburettor for combustion inside the engine.