Hello everyone. New here. I'm going to be brief about this backstory because I'm pretty pissed, and I'm trying to include relevant details.

Boyfriend's brother took off with our car yesterday (we would never have let him drive it because he breaks everything he touches), we looked for him for hours, and he finally got a hold of us to say: Hey dude, your car broke down. Apparently they ran it until it was completely out of fuel, and then filled it up with 'whatever was in that gas can in the garage', and tried to drive to the gas station. They gave it a couple bucks of fuel, and started driving back and apparently the car started running lean, started acting like it was running out of gas, and died.

We now can't start the car. We aren't going to get an honest answer out of him as far as how much he abused the car while it was in his possession, but from what we can tell, we hear the fuel pump come on when we try to start the car, the car cranks, but won't start.

We've tested the relays (swapping the hi lamp and fuel pump black boxes) and they seem fine. All fuses seem to be in good condition. Fuel vacuum line is on and ziptied.

Obviously, no one wants to have to take their car to the dealer and pay for diagnostics (especially when this will likely come out to be user-error) and won't be covered anyway. We're trying to rule out as much as we can before we bleed ourselves of money to fix this kid's screw up.

What else can we trouble shoot to rule some things out? I'd like to bleed the fuel lines and see a( if the fuel pump is really trying to push fuel through,) b(the relays aren't failing), or c( if there's water,sediment, or air in the line) but I'm not sure where the fuel lines are located or how to go about doing that.

Greatly appreciative of any assistance, and thanks for your time.

 

"Whatever in that gas can in the garage" must've really messed up your fuel system or even the engine. . There's a possibility you got a little bit of something that wasn't fuel into your engine. Find that tank and see what was inside with fuel. If it was trash or debris, you would have to clean up the lines. If it was water or other liquid, try the following at your own risk. Now this is an un-orthodox method that's used in case of an engine flooding but do this as a last resort: I would suggest you to remove the spark-plugs and try to start the engine. You should have fuel squirting out of the engine. If not, your fuel lines are clogged. Bleed the fuel lines, empty the tank (by opening up a valve underneath). If none of this works, call your dealer and act dumb. Be like "we put fuel in the car and now it's not working anymore". Pretend like you have no clue what could have happened.

Most likely some trash must have gotten sucked up by the fuel lines and clogged them.

 

After a lot of (admittedly amateur) troubleshooting today, I am really leaning towards the possibility that he might have just blown the fuel pump at this point, but first I'm going to try and bleed the lines. From what I understand, there is no "valve" on the underside of the gas tank that you can bleed it through, and I haven't jacked it up yet to get under there, but from other forum posts I see mention of two 12mm bolts that can be unscrewed and the tank can be bled from there.

I don't want to try and bleed the tank via the fuel lines (in case he didn't overheat it, running it on complete empty and revving at high RPMs) because that would pretty much do the same thing, right?

Apparently Chilton doesn't even MAKE a Mitsubishi manual, so where can I go to find a step by step process of locating the fuel lines and disconnecting the return? The fuel filter is actually built into the fuel pump (or so I am told, I need to find more info), so I'm not sure where to begin on this.

The good folks at Autozone MIGHT just be trying to sell me on a new fuel pump, but three different locations have told me that clogged fuel lines/dirty filters would still allow the car to START, it would just run nasty and then die shortly thereafter...



The guys at Autozone reccomended a website that sounded like alldata.com, but I'll have to research that when I get home, as I'm picking up tools at the moment. Any ideas?

Edit: The guy also recommended starter fluid to bypass the fuel system and make sure there isn't a compression problem on the cheap: but this car has a turbo and no easy access to the throttle body to inject it through, and suggested potentially spraying it into the intake - that seems pretty sketchy, so I'm not sure. We also picked up fuel line/injector/system cleaning fluid to add to the gas, but I'm also not sure how much or if it will help at all, if the lines are so clogged with sediment it won't even start.

 

Update: We blew the ignition fuse, I'm guessing from trying various starting methods, so we weren't getting a spark - Fixed this problem and had him push down on the gas pedal as we attempted a crank and I smelled fuel. Peeked inside the block, it *looks* bone dry in there, so we dipped down into it and it was flecked with black fluid (did not look good?).

A friend of ours with more experience will be stopping by tonight to help us with the fuel troubleshooting, but if I'm smelling fuel from the injectors, can I assume the pump is atleast functioning (just very dirty?)

 

I don't know if you should go to Autozone for this matter. Take it to the dealer. Reading this I can tell you're not exactly brave in terms of taking your car apart so just let professionals handle it. Are you under warranty?

 

Yanked the whole pump assembly. I see some sediment in the tank, a little in the pump housing assembly, and the filter, well, it looks like this.



I see flecks of metal shavings in the bottom of the filter with all that black crud.

Is it worth it to try and find a replacement filter, or just buy the walbro255 pump assembly kit? (Does that come with a filter?)