Fuel check valve ('97 SL2)
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Junior Member
Joined: Aug 2024
Posts: 8
Fuel check valve ('97 SL2)
When starting my '97 SL2, I first have to put the key in accessory position in order to start the fuel pump. Otherwise, the engine cranks with no start. I've read elsewhere that the problem may be a faulty fuel check valve, however, the part is not available at RockAuto and I don't know where it's located. Has anyone had this experience and/or do you have advice? I'm thinking that I could buy a fuel check valve and install it between the fuel pump and the engine, but don't know if that's a good idea.
Thanks.
Thanks.
Super Moderator
Joined: Jul 2005
Posts: 12,316
From: Slightly off center
A large percentage of 97 S cars came off the assembly line with poorly designed fuel pumps. The defect is that an excessive amount of pressure bleeds off too quickly, making the vehicle difficult to start and restart. This also includes a slow initial pressure buildup.
Most of them failed completely in the 1st few years and were replaced with a redesigned version.
The ones that didn't fail behave as you describe.
I know this because i owned a 97 SC2 for 268K and dealt with this for most of its life.
It never failed so i never replaced it.
Here's what i figured out as my foolproof starting sequence to minimize wear on the starter:
Turn key to ON
Initial bulb check begins
When the service wench light goes off, crank the engine. It should start with very little hesitation.
Hope this works for you.
Most of them failed completely in the 1st few years and were replaced with a redesigned version.
The ones that didn't fail behave as you describe.
I know this because i owned a 97 SC2 for 268K and dealt with this for most of its life.
It never failed so i never replaced it.
Here's what i figured out as my foolproof starting sequence to minimize wear on the starter:
Turn key to ON
Initial bulb check begins
When the service wench light goes off, crank the engine. It should start with very little hesitation.
Hope this works for you.
Member
Joined: Jan 2024
Posts: 58
From: SW Michigan
The math....
You have to wait five seconds for sufficient fuel pressure at startup.
It takes about 5 hours to change the pump.
If you start the car on average twice a day - it will take at least 8 years to make up the time - assuming the new pump does not fail in like fashion - which it probably will - according to Mr. Murphy....
You have to wait five seconds for sufficient fuel pressure at startup.
It takes about 5 hours to change the pump.
If you start the car on average twice a day - it will take at least 8 years to make up the time - assuming the new pump does not fail in like fashion - which it probably will - according to Mr. Murphy....
Spot on
Super Moderator
Joined: Jul 2005
Posts: 12,316
From: Slightly off center
I'm generally poor w tools and it only took me a few. hours.
I did have the assistance of my hillbilly brother n law..
One of the most time-consuming parts was how long it took him to fully cross thread one of the strap bolts.
Oh, and this was for a 95.
The replacement pumps were and are designed differently so the same failure mode is most unlikely.
Lastly, if you wait too long, it will not start either, most of the time. Never put a fuel pressure gauge on it to sort out why. Always assumed that the pressure bleed off was fast enough that too much pressure would bleed off between when it stopped priming and when you finally turned the key.
I did have the assistance of my hillbilly brother n law..
One of the most time-consuming parts was how long it took him to fully cross thread one of the strap bolts.
Oh, and this was for a 95.
The replacement pumps were and are designed differently so the same failure mode is most unlikely.
Lastly, if you wait too long, it will not start either, most of the time. Never put a fuel pressure gauge on it to sort out why. Always assumed that the pressure bleed off was fast enough that too much pressure would bleed off between when it stopped priming and when you finally turned the key.
Last edited by derf; Aug 31, 2024 at 12:44 AM.
Super Moderator
Joined: Jul 2005
Posts: 12,316
From: Slightly off center
Interesting question.
His name IS Bill....
The “hillbilly” has been an enduring staple of American iconography, and Arkansas has been identified with the hillbilly as much as, if not more than, any state. Despite the lack of scholarly consensus on the origin of the term—historian Anthony Harkins gives as the most likely explanation that Scottish highlanders melded “hill-folk” with “billie,” a word meaning friend or companion—there is no shortage of hillbilly images in American popular culture. Whether a barefoot, rifle-toting, moonshine-swigging, bearded man staring out from beneath a floppy felt hat or a toothless granny in homespun sitting at a spinning wheel and peering suspiciously at strangers from the front porch of a dilapidated mountain cabin, the hillbilly, in all his manifestations, is instantly recognizable. Wrapped up with the condescension in people’s common view of the hillbilly is a trace of admiration for what they perceive as his independent spirit and his disregard for the trappings of modern society.
In modern American popular culture, the term hillbilly is often used interchangeably with other epithets for poor white people such as “redneck,” “cracker,” or “white trash.” But, throughout much of the twentieth century, the word hillbilly conjured a character whose geographic origins were more narrowly defined. Referring to poor, uneducated whites, generally in the Appalachians or the Ozarks but not always confined to these two Southern highland regions, the hillbilly made his literary debut only in 1900, in the pages of the New York Journal. The term was likely in common use, however, in the rural South by the late nineteenth century. Although the subjects of the Journal piece were residents of the Alabama hills, the first scholarly use of the term appeared four years later in a study of Arkansas Ozarks dialect. One can argue that “hillbilly” and Arkansas have been synonymous ever since.
The popularization of the term hillbilly might be a twentieth-century phenomenon, but the genealogy of the hillbilly icon stretches deep into Arkansas history, from Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s caustic descriptions of the Arkansas Ozarks’s earliest settlers to the late-nineteenth-century stories of Opie Read in his Arkansas Traveler. As Anthony Harkins notes, by the time of the Civil War, the word “‘Arkansas’ was becoming instantly recognizable shorthand for the half-comic, half-savage backwoodsman.
Arkansas’s most blatant symbol of the hillbilly stereotype, Dogpatch, went out of business in the early 1990s, but any hopes that the state finally had outrun its hillbilly image came crashing down during the 1992 election and early presidency of Bill Clinton. Metropolitan reporters and cartoonists joined Ross Perot in hammering Arkansas and its governor, and, despite his Yale law degree and his status as a Rhodes Scholar, Clinton often was depicted as the yokel leader of a hillbilly state. Almost 175 years after Schoolcraft first expressed disdain for the backcountry denizens of Arkansas territory, the little state of Arkansas, and supposed hillbillies everywhere, continued to absorb the barbs of more urbane visitors and pundits.
Source
His name IS Bill....
The “hillbilly” has been an enduring staple of American iconography, and Arkansas has been identified with the hillbilly as much as, if not more than, any state. Despite the lack of scholarly consensus on the origin of the term—historian Anthony Harkins gives as the most likely explanation that Scottish highlanders melded “hill-folk” with “billie,” a word meaning friend or companion—there is no shortage of hillbilly images in American popular culture. Whether a barefoot, rifle-toting, moonshine-swigging, bearded man staring out from beneath a floppy felt hat or a toothless granny in homespun sitting at a spinning wheel and peering suspiciously at strangers from the front porch of a dilapidated mountain cabin, the hillbilly, in all his manifestations, is instantly recognizable. Wrapped up with the condescension in people’s common view of the hillbilly is a trace of admiration for what they perceive as his independent spirit and his disregard for the trappings of modern society.
In modern American popular culture, the term hillbilly is often used interchangeably with other epithets for poor white people such as “redneck,” “cracker,” or “white trash.” But, throughout much of the twentieth century, the word hillbilly conjured a character whose geographic origins were more narrowly defined. Referring to poor, uneducated whites, generally in the Appalachians or the Ozarks but not always confined to these two Southern highland regions, the hillbilly made his literary debut only in 1900, in the pages of the New York Journal. The term was likely in common use, however, in the rural South by the late nineteenth century. Although the subjects of the Journal piece were residents of the Alabama hills, the first scholarly use of the term appeared four years later in a study of Arkansas Ozarks dialect. One can argue that “hillbilly” and Arkansas have been synonymous ever since.
The popularization of the term hillbilly might be a twentieth-century phenomenon, but the genealogy of the hillbilly icon stretches deep into Arkansas history, from Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s caustic descriptions of the Arkansas Ozarks’s earliest settlers to the late-nineteenth-century stories of Opie Read in his Arkansas Traveler. As Anthony Harkins notes, by the time of the Civil War, the word “‘Arkansas’ was becoming instantly recognizable shorthand for the half-comic, half-savage backwoodsman.
Arkansas’s most blatant symbol of the hillbilly stereotype, Dogpatch, went out of business in the early 1990s, but any hopes that the state finally had outrun its hillbilly image came crashing down during the 1992 election and early presidency of Bill Clinton. Metropolitan reporters and cartoonists joined Ross Perot in hammering Arkansas and its governor, and, despite his Yale law degree and his status as a Rhodes Scholar, Clinton often was depicted as the yokel leader of a hillbilly state. Almost 175 years after Schoolcraft first expressed disdain for the backcountry denizens of Arkansas territory, the little state of Arkansas, and supposed hillbillies everywhere, continued to absorb the barbs of more urbane visitors and pundits.
Source
Last edited by derf; Aug 31, 2024 at 01:01 AM.
Senior Member
Joined: Jul 2011
Posts: 5,544
From: Anniston, AL
To be clear, it's Hillbilly. As a native Tennessean currently living in the hills of Alabama, trust me. I was raised as one and have been called all of the colorful names mentioned by derf and I wear EVERY ONE of them with pride. We're people that Northern transplants have learned to get along with or suffer the consequences. Plain and simple, leave us alone and we'll leave you alone.