And people said 30 was supposed to be bad

A series of untimely, unfortunate and bizarre events have made this a less than desired week. While nobody's dead that I'm aware of, which I'm grateful for (my Dad had major neck surgery a couple of weeks ago and my brother's in Iraq), not much has gone right this week.

I've been driving the Impala recently because I'd thought I had a major fuel leak in the 914 up front.. Turned out to be user error, reconnected hose and smells better. Coming home from Texas Tuesday the Imp developed a bad vibration that's progressed, engine related somewhere. Again, haven't had a chance to look at it because of various obligations, so I grab the 914 and drive.

Does OK yesterday. This morning on the way to work, it dies without warning. It will crank and I hear the fuel pump if I move the flap. I attempted to "prime" it with the flap and it ran again for about 20 feet and died. Afterwards I was unable to get it to fire again. Cranks fine, no unexpected mechanical noises. I did notice that the flap didn't seem to be all that smooth in it's motion - almost felt like it was dragging about 30% into the motion.

I was late for work and wasn't quite out of the neighborhood, so I was able to walk it back most of the way (only had to push uphill about 40 yards...) and drive the Impala in with it's problems - no time to give it any sort of once-over. Looks like I'll be working on cars tonight.

I'll have a better idea of what's going on when I can spend some time with it, but any ideas or recommendations would be great.

If the pump works when you move the flap, and it doesn't when you try to run the engine without "manual stimulation", then the flap's not moving. It's not moving because (A) It's stuck, or ( You have a pretty significant vacuum leak. Check all the hoses, the TWO oil cap gaskets, and, if all's good there, the valve cover gaskets. The Cap'n

Is the Impala a small block RWD model? Sometimes the balancer shifts on its ring on small blocks... you have iron inner and outer rings connected by rubber and if the outer ring shifts, it won't be balanced correctly any more.

I managed to destroy a balancer in a bizarre accident... I was pulling the Corvette into the garage and I managed to run over a piece of plastic well pipe that had wedged itself up against the concrete apron, threaded itself into the engine compartment in just such a way to press against the outer ring of the balancer, so when the car moved forward, the balancer outer ring got pushed into the timing cover. Damnedest failure mode I had ever seen.

I'll check the gaskets tonight first. I'd find it odd that the gaskets would suddenly leak without manual intervention, but with this week - I'll buy that.

Thanks!

Already went through that a few months after I bought it. Power steering quits working after driving through a puddle too. Freaked me out how much travel you get on that when they start to separate.

Getting tires on the Monte in the next day or so so I can have at least one car without problems up and running.

"Getting tires on the Monte in the next day or so so I can have at least one car without problems up and running." You probably shouldn't have said anything, you might have jinxed the Monte Carlo!

Hang in there man. That's the exact same last couple of months we've been having. You'll get it sorted out and hopefully it's something simple and easy to fix on both of the cars.

I'm betting the 914 went comatose because it finally realized it wasn't going to get to go to MUSR 10! We'll really miss you there!