1980 stalled out

[oxeicher]

My 1980 elcamino stalled and refuses to restart. I've been driving it about 100 miles a day for a week after it sat in the barn for a year. I got to a stoplight and it stalled. I restarted it drove 100 feet and it stalled again. I've gone over the entire ignition system, (new cap, rotor, coil) and installed a new fuel pump. It has the v6 engine. Any ideas?

[dano01]

My 80 Malibu had a similar problem. It turned out to be a worn timing chain and few worn lobes on the cam. I had to advance the timing just to limp it into the driveway.

[oxeicher]

Thanks for the info. Guess I'll try looking into that possibility.

[bobss396]

Did you replace the ECM, electronic control module? It sits on the distributor plate and is fairly easy to change. I've seen those cause a lot of problems that came on all of a sudden.

A least you should rule out a jump in timing (which I doubt is the problem). Pull the #1 spark plug, bring the cylinder up to TDC, pop off the distributor cap off and see where the rotor is pointing. It should be pointing to where the #1 tower in the cap is. It might be 180 off depending on which cycle of TDC you are on, which is ok. You'll be looking for something obviously way off.

Bob