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Hey,

I have a Subaru, L Series, sports wagon, 1.8L, 89 model
and recently it has trouble staring, but only after it has been driving for a while.

For example ill get up in the morning, and it will start fine, ill drive for half an hour stop and starting and it will still start fine.
But then after that I have to turn it over for five to ten seconds and pump the Accelerator a bit to get it to start
Then there is a bit of a strong fuel smell from the engine area?

Just after some opinions on what it would be and if I should get it fixed, and if so how much would it cost??

Cheers.

Have a look around your carbie, see if there is any fuel leaking through the gaskets.
You will need to move your air filter first
Or it could be your fuel filter(if you have one)

Thanks very much, ill check it out

Smell would be because you are pumping the throttle and squirting petrol in to the engine each time you do so, try just holding your foot down half way and let the engine draw the fuel in, as for not starting straight away-is the car running on the warm to hot side of things when you switch it off? If so, could be heat soak causing the fuel in the carby to evaporate out and flood the engine a little bit, once again just holding the throttle open about halfway and letting the fuel pump refill the carby may help.

Busdriver wrote:Smell would be because you are pumping the throttle and squirting petrol in to the engine each time you do so, try just holding your foot down half way and let the engine draw the fuel in, as for not starting straight away-is the car running on the warm to hot side of things when you switch it off? If so, could be heat soak causing the fuel in the carby to evaporate out and flood the engine a little bit, once again just holding the throttle open about halfway and letting the fuel pump refill the carby may help.

It could be pumping the throttle but my guess would be that there's a bit of crap stuck in the "anti-dieseling solenoid", allowing the fuel to evaporate into the airfilter and ultimately your engine bay, hence the smell of petrol.

How far has your L travelled, and is it the original engine? If it is the original engine and upwards of 250,000km I'd reckon you need a carbie kit to renew all the different components - while you're there you can clean all the crud from the bottom of the bowl...

Cheers

Bennie

Hey bennie,
Cheers for the info, yeah, orig motor, and shes got 240 000 on it