I purchased a 91 Subaru Sambar about 6 months ago to be my hunting vehicle. I licensed it for road use to drive back & forth to our deer lease (12m) & in 4wheel drive, drive to hunting site. Until recently it has performed above expectations. Recently & now more frequently, it will stutter, lunge forward & then die. After a short period of time & patting accelerator several times, it will start at very high RPM idle., only to repeat the process in a couple. I have read all Sambar posts & decided it was a fuel pump issue. I replaced the fuel pump with NAPA universal fuel pump & filter. The pump only had 2 wires (hot & ground). I attached ground wire to ground wire. I attached the yellow wire & hot wire to the positive lead on the pump. The pump is pumping fuel, but truck won't start. It appears to not be getting fire to the plugs? Solutions.........................
Is your truck carbureted or EFI (supercharged)? Does the starter turn over the engine (and it doesn't start) or the engine doesn't turn over at all? It might be worth while to take a look under the distributor cap and see how that looks. It probably wouldn't hurt to change the spark plugs, and distributor cap and rotor if they haven't been changed in a while. Even if that's not the problem. It may also be a bad ignition coil. If you're able to check if you have adequate spark output, you could rule these out. A vacuum leak might cause some issues, but unless a hose was completely disconnected, it probably wouldn't prevent it from starting (or at least trying to start). And never rule our electrical issues. Years of exposure can corrode wiring connections. Any number of things can get a bad ground from some rust, and kill critical circuits.
Spikefiend, Thanks for the reply...............Sambar is carb. It starts fine, idles perfectly and runs about 2 miles then sputters & lurches & then dies. Since my last post, I pulled everything again & replaced the NAPA fuel pump with the original & it cranked right up. Ran to local store & filled up with gas. Drove it 15 miles to hunting lease. Did not miss a beat. However, on the way home, stalled & died 30 times. I cut open the old fuel filter & it was full of reddish paste. I will check the new fuel filter (transparent). My thinking is that the problem is fuel tank. I have replaced all of fuel lines & everything but fuel pump. Possibles: 1) Fuel line connections to the pump are loose, 2) trash in fuel tank or 3) bad fuel pump.
UPDATE: I inspected all of the parts again & the fuel filter was full again. I contemplated pulling the fuel tank, but post indicates I had just filled the tank. So I replaced the fuel filter & have know driven 40 uneventful miles. If this continues, pulling the tank & cleaning it is the next step. The fuel filter used was an over the counter clear filter with 1/4" connections. Filter is performing just fine.
It's been 6 years since the original poster provided an update. From their last update, it seems that their problem was pretty obviously sediment in the fuel tank. If you believe that you're experiencing the same issue, the solution should be pretty obvious: inspect and potentially clean the tank, then replace the fuel filter. Do not forget that your fuel lines and pump may also have some of this same sediment in them.
