Just cut out on the Fwy, fuel issue Options

[johnpierre]

hello 914 community

so I was driving the other Sunday - nice drive with no traffic due to covid, doing 80 on the 405 heading south, for those of you that don't live in LA, that is in LA ;-) and then all of a sudden I just lost power.

it sounded like I ran out of gas but that of course is impossible as the tank was 1/2 full. I have a 73, 1.7 fuel injected engine and I have never had this issue.

I suppose I can tow the car to a garage but I thought I might put this out there in case this sounds familiar to anyone and I could try to troubleshoot the issue first. is there anything I can check rather easily to solve this? has this happened to anyone else under these conditions?

I looked all around the top of the engine as best I could when it happened and I didn't see anything disconcerted or otherwise out of place - but then again I don't really know what I was looking for and it was hot so I really could feel around that much.

-jp-

[rjames]

while i was trying to start the car i heard a pop and saw some smoke coming from the engine bay, i looked all over and could not see anything burnt, or still smoking. i could not smell anything buring so just assumed it came from the tail pipe area.

This is concerning. I would check the all of the wiring in the engine bay very closely, making sure everything is connected correctly and there's no broken or exposed wires shorting something out.

Something else to check- take the distributor cap off and make sure the small braided ground wire inside is still attached. The car won't start if it's not attached or has a bad connection.
Once upon a time I wired my distributor up incorrectly and fried the ground wire. A bit of smoke and a toasted ground wire was the result, as was a car that wouldn't start anymore.