Hoping like hell someone here can help me figure out whats wrong with my car. Today I was driving and my car began reving up between 4-5k, so I drove it straight home even without giving it gas it was consistently staying at 4-5k. Today I went outside and started it, and it immediately started shaking and after about 3 seconds it died. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Matt

 

My guess is fuel delivery problems. Under certain circumstances, lean mixture can cause RPM to increase. I used to see this on motorcycles when they got fuel starved as a result of the rider forgetting to open the petcock. Pretty soon, there's no fuel and the engine halts.

I had a fuel pump go out on my 1973 Dodge Dart. It would start and idle, but had insufficient fuel flow to support any real motoring, so it would die when I tried to accelerate. Clogged fuel filters can render the same effect. This may be paranoia, but I never fill my tank when the delivery truck is at the station, as it may stir up a lot of sediment which ends up in the filters.

Vapor lock will do it too, which is why you should never top off your tank after the nozzle shuts off (unless you know it was premature).

 

Major vacuum leak?

This would cause the ECM to see a lean condition, add fuel and now you have good a good mixture for 4-5k result.

Then when you try to start it, the vacuum leak gets in the way of a smooth idle, the car dies.

 

Probably a long shot, but I just had an oil change and the car would not start. It would crank but immediately shut down like it was out of fuel (but had a full tank). After the guys at the oil change had reached stroke level from trying to get my car up and running, one of them finally tapped on the MAF sensor and after a little bit of a shudder the car started and appears to be running fine. Possibly your MAF sensor is going bad? I had no problems before the oil change and believe one of the guys knocked it loose, but just checked and the sensor is under $100 so may change just for the peace of mind. Good luck!