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I need advice on my 20 r chinook Ive been hit with some issues first it wouldn't start I got it push started drove down the road then it started it to hesitate if i pressed the gas too much . I managed to pull it over. i replaced the starter thought thing were fine but after it starts n warms up and the idle quiets down it starts to stall out again. i cant figure out what it is. Im stuck by a park in san francisco were there is a street sweeper coming tomorrow n will end with me having a ticket or towed i live in my chinook and I dont have much money so this is deadly to me. any advice would help
Sounds like a carburetor issue, possibly the choke or fuel filter or clogged passages.
Unfortunately you're going to either need to learn auto mechanics or pay for a shop to look at it, which sounds like it'll be hard in your situation. These are old trucks and they require either a decent bank account to pay for repairs, or a decent knowledge of auto mechanics to fix stuff yourself. They last more or less forever, but not without routine maintanence and little fixes here and there.
My advice for now is to find 2 or 3 people to push you and pop start it again, and move it to somewhere it can sit longer, or to a mechanic.
Let me know how it goes. I was living out of my Chinook most of the last year.
I am having similar issues with my '76 Chinook, and it was nearly deadly last night. It's 20R motor, recent rebuild (not by me), with 4 spd manual trans. All was well on drive from CO to NC until I accidentally ran the tank nearly dry. Ever since then, intermittent stalling/coughing problems. They are getting more severe and more frequent, but when not doing that it is running like brand new. First seemed to be in-line fuel filter in engine compartment. Changed that out, and got about 200 miles with no issues then it clogged again. Repeated that 2 more times, same symptoms with less clogging in that filter each time. Replaced fuel line from filter to carb (new Webber, FYI), and replaced fuel like from frame to filter. No change. Took it to mechanic who replaced the 6-month old aftermarket electric fuel pump with a new one. Made it about 100 miles and died again. Dropped tank, and it was nearly spotless inside (clearly not 40 years worth of crud....but no idea when it had been done before). The feeder hose from the tank was brittle and decaying, so replaced that. Got about 2 miles, and sputtered and died. Checked everything again more closely, and noticed there is ANOTHER fuel filter attached to the new, aftermarket (Mr. Gasket) electric fuel pump. That was clogged. Could not find a replacement (I'm in the middle of nowhere WV at the moment) so all I could do was try to blow it out with some compressed air. Ran great for about 100 miles, died again. Finally found replacement part, and when I swapped it out this morning the "old" one seemed to be blocked up again. Where can it be coming from?!?!? Between filters, fuel pump, mechanic's fees, and days missed at work, I am out about $2k on this little road trip....and still 8+ hrs from home. If I am still having this issue again today, I'm out of ideas. Thoughts? Suggestions?
So it's definitely clogging? I had a similar issue with a truck. Never figured out what it was...but there was a thought that an old fuel line was collapsing under load. You could replace all the rubber fuel line...
But if you can see that the filters are actually clogging, then that's a different story. I agree. If the tank is spotless and you've done what you've done, I can't imagine where the crud is coming from.
Hey my name is Brady and I just bought my first toyota. it is an 81 4x4 SR5 Helix and it keeps stalling out after it warms up, then after a few mins it will run again. The fuel pump was mounted on the front fender and was getting hot so I moved it to the frame, Then I noticed it didn't have a thermostat so I put a new one in it and changed out the senser in the coolant hose. im stumped please help. I am new the forum.
Last edited by Brady Kingston; 10-11-2015 at 09:03 PM.
Busted knee, if you have an aftermarket electric fuel pump (the Mr. Gasket one you mentioned) you could run that into a gas can in the engine compartment if you are out of ideas. I had a friend with a '78 pickup with a 20r who tried that, and when that didn't work, he found out it was the igniter module on the coil. When he bought a replacement one of those, the stalling problem disappeared.
To the original poster, and anyone having a problem keeping the engine idling without having your foot on the gas: I have one big solid piece of advice. I'm not sure if getting it running has to do with it not idling properly for your case, but if it stalls without having your foot on the throttle keeping it going, this may help you out.
I had that problem with the no idle unless foot on throttle. It needed starting fluid to start from cold, (try this if you haven't yet to test) and wouldn't stay idling without foot on gas. I saw all kinds of attempts over the years to try to fix it, from the big dent punched in the side of the cab to the aftermarket ignition coil and disconnected electric inline fuel pump and the previous owner's claim that it just needed the choke adjusted. I tried all kinds of things from rebuilding the carburetor and a remanufactured carburetor to resealing the carburetor base gasket several times. The idle cut solenoid came in to question. I researched what it did, when it would be on and when it would be off during operation, and which inputs and outputs switched it on or off and when. I wired it directly to be on all the time, and it idled. It finally f˟˟˟ing idled. But what kept it idling without the hardwiring was to fix all the solder joints in the emissions computer. It's the little grey box under the furebox sort of to the left of the clutch pedal. I opened it up, wiggled each electrical component a little bit, and in 11:00am sunlight, applied flux to all of the solder joints that showed any tiny cracks after wiggling the electrical components on the other side of the board. There were a lot, and I had to do this procedure twice since the first time I only soldered up components with tiny solder cracks that I hadn't even wiggled. I hope this helps.
Other parts of the emissions systems may fail and the truck will continue to run fine, but the fuel cut solenoid as controlled by the emissions computer is the one exception that will make an emissions system failure actually effect the running and driving functionality of the truck. I researched the hell out of how it worked, and came up with the best way to do it to restore it to original.
In a pinch, to hotwire it open, you will need to find the two wires that open it. I believe they are the white and black striped wire, and the red one. They can be traced to the barrel shaped object on the side of the carburetor, not the electric choke, if yours has one. The 20R carburetor will be different than the one I had, but it should still have a non-catalytic emission control system which should have an idle fuel cut solenoid tied in.
Last edited by zombie_stomp; 10-15-2015 at 06:00 PM.
I had a stalling problem too on my '79. It would take a lot of pumping the gas to get it started but once it started it would idle pretty good but once I started driving it would stall within a very short distance, less than 1/4 mile. After trying a few other dudes I pulled the electric fuel pump out of the gas tank to check/change the strainer that's in there and I found the inline check valve (pic below) that's attached to the pump assy. I took it out and blew through it in each direction and found that whichever way I blew air was coming out of what I believe to be the pressure relief valve on the side of it. I replaced it with a small piece of straight pipe and it cranked right up. I took it for a short test drive and there no signs of hesitation or of the engine wanting to stall. So that apparently was my problem and what I think was happening was that as the pump was pumping gas to the engine a lot of what it was being pumped was going out the side of this valve and right back into the tank instead of to the engine and it would stall from not getting enough gas.
08-09-2015, 07:20 AM
