How to Start a Stalled Car

Video Transcript

"Good afternoon, my name is Tom Brintzenhofe, certified master mechanic out of Redding, PA. Today I'm going to talk to you a little bit about how to start a stalled car. Now if your vehicle starts and runs and you're driving down the road and you go to pull out and you stall it and it just doesn't want to start back up, it sounds like it wants to start but it just doesn't, a lot of times what happens is make them stall is they get flooded out. I'm going to talk to you a little bit about that. It's just when you get a little bit too much fuel inside the cylinders and it doesn't have enough air and it just starves it and ends up shutting off on you. Now these newer vehicles are all electronic which makes them a little bit more difficult to start when they've stalled out. What I can tell you to do, the easiest thing I can tell you to do if that's a scenario and it happens to you is hold your gas pedal all the way to the floor and that will tell your computer that you're a wide open throttle and it's basically in failsafe mode and what it does it will shut the fuel off all together a wide open throttle and it will allow that excess fuel that's in your cylinders already to burn off. It might, as you crank it just lift your foot off the throttle just a little bit in little tiny increments and it will start putting fuel back into your cylinders again. That's the easiest way and in most case scenarios when a vehicle stalls it's usually the case. Now if you have other problems that make your engine stall out whether you lose spark or you lose fuel or whatnot, it's really not going to matter too much at what you do to it if you have a mechanical problem or electrical problem, it's not going to start for you but as for the stalling it out because you flooded it or let the clutch out a little too fast or whatever, that's what I can tell you. Hold the fuel pedal all the way to the floor wide open throttle, crank it for about 5, 6 seconds, start bringing your foot up off the pedal and it should start up for you. If it doesn't, unfortunately you'll probably have to get yourself a tow truck and tow it back to the house and start working on it or tow it to your local shop but that's the easiest thing I can tell you in this starting a vehicle that's stalled on you."