Trouble Starting 99 Suburban

[wilkerson3]

Yesterday our 99 Suburban was having trouble starting. If I gave it just a little gas with the accelerator, it would start. No accelerator, it would just try and turn over without starting. Warm or cold start, same issue (Temps yesterday actually were warmer around upper 40's)

Don't know if this is related, but about a week or two ago it has started to act as if it isn't getting enough fuel when driving on the interstate (60+ mph or so) and when needing to give a little extra gas to help get around a vehicle the engine acted like it had a governor and wouldn't respond to hitting the accelerator. Let off the accelerator for just a second and accelerate again, no problem. So, I just haven't pushed it on the interstate and no problem. Only really seams to be a problem when giving extra gas to try and get it extra power when already over 65/70 mph. (Drives just fine at these speeds if not asking it to work any harder than maintaining it's speed.)

I am trying to figure out where I need to start looking/testing. I don't know if the two issues are related, so I thought I'd just bring them both up.

Thanks for the help.

[BowNaxe]

Did your Check Engine Light (CEL) ever come on? If so get the code read to start troubleshooting. If no codes are present yet then start with the fuel pressure. My '97 did the same thing a while back and it was just a warning shot that the fuel pump was going out. You should never need to "pump" the pedal on a fuel injection type engine. Hope this helps.

[maxwedge]

Get a FP gage on it and look for 65 psi, usual issue with pumps on these trucks.

[wilkerson3]

Thanks, guys. No light or codes yet. Sorry about implying "pumping", but rather a slight tap on the gas once the engine kicks over always gets it enough gas to start up.

I will run a test on the FP. Thanks, again for the direction

[wilkerson3]

Took into the shop and they ran multiple tests. Conclusion is the spider assembly is occasionally leaking fuel and pooling up. So it hesitates at the start, but when I "pump" it after it catches the fuel burns off and we're good to go.

So...I'll be replacing the assembly and then update this post and we'll see if they were correct.

[swingline]

there is a conversion kit through gm to change the central injector and poppet valves to regular multi-point injection.

it's expensive (not sure how much a replacement spider is) but worth in MHO because it eliminates all of the problems associated with CSFI aka "the spider".