Charis

Thanks for the additional suggestions. We gave our mechanic the last list and he said he checked everything on the it, but will also provide him this one and keep folks posted as to results. We do so appreciate the help.

I checked and it IS an EFI engine. Plus the carb valve wouldn't explain the pressure building in the tank when the thing is parked, would it?

Side of vehicle. Will have to check tomorrow, it's at my boyfriend's house, to see if there is a big airfilter. I may also take picture so can post.

I am not sure of which kind, however, there is an EFI mounted on the side of the vehicle which I have been told means Electronic Fuel Injection.

An update....still not fixed and mechanic says he is stymied. He's done the following: Replaced thermostat. That seems to have solved the issue of the temperature guage showing the engine as being too hot. Replaced the gas cap with a brand new one that is definitely a vented cap and even just sitting in the lot it's still building up pressure in the gas tank. Then he put in a different EVAP charcoal cannister and tried to drive it and about four miles away the engine died and gas was again flowing out the canister. One suggested possibility was that the exhaust was too close to gas tank causing gas to become overheated and thus excessive vapor pressure. This does not seem likely because the pressure is building even when the Dolphin is just sitting in the lot without the engine running and the exhaust was in the same place when we took it on the June trip and had no problems, although we did get only 5 miles / gallon on that trip. Those are also the same reasons that the suggested answer of a failing and overheating fuel pump was rejected. If it were an overheating fuel pump then there should be no pressure buildup from just sitting in the parking lot of the repair shop. Any and all suggestions would be gratefully accepted as we're at wit's end as we have company coming next weekend and had hoped to have the kids sleep in it, but we're not sure it will even make the drive from the shop to the house...let alone the drive to the nearest dumping station. We also only have a few week until our next camping trip and if we can't rely on "Howie" to get us there and back we will need time to make other arrangements.

Thank you...will get this info to the mechanic and have him check...will keep everyone posted.

Noreen, Any chance you're having the same issue we had, where the pressure inside the tank is apparently building up (possibly due to a gas cap that is unvented) so fuel spills over into the charcoal EVAP cannister and then when that fills up drains out through it's "emergency" overflow hose into the engine compartment area? We had that happen on our way out of town last weekend and it was gushing gas out of the cannister.

Okay, this is too wierd. Last weekend we headed out to the mountains with our 1982 Dolphin, we have 22RE engine and a 4 speed manual transmission, and about a half hour out of town it started sputtering like it was starving for gas, but we had just filled up. We managed to get it into a parking lot at at gas station before it completely died. As luck would have it, we were just down the street from a Toyota Service shop. They sent someone over who looked at it and determined that what we thought was a broken fuel line, was in fact an overflowing charcoal EVAP system canister, which he felt was due to the use of the new locking gas cap my boyfriend had purchased. He felt it was not allowing the tank to vent, especially as we climbed into the mountains, and that was causing the fuel to overflow into the canister. So we put the old gas cap on and it seemed to be working fine. We drove on to the campsite and everything seemed okay. However, when we started back Monday we only got about a mile from the campsite and the temperature guage began screaming up towards the red line. So again we pulled over. We checked fluids and had plenty of both antifreeze and oil. The radiator was not steaming nor did it appear that anything was running into the neighboring overflow reservoir and the hoses, while warm, were not scorching hot. So we thought it might be a bad temp gage, so we tried again...after releasing more pressure from the gas tank by unscrewing the top. It seemed to run okay in idle but sputtered as soon as we put a load onto it. Even driving it with the heat on full blast in the cab didn't help, the temp guage kept climbing towards the red line. We ended up having it towed all the way back to town and to the shop. Well today the shop is testing it and can't find anything wrong. I'm wondering if the problems could be all related. Neither gas cap seems to be vented, at least neither of them have any holes in them, nor are either of them marked as "vented". So does anyone know exactly what part number we need for this gas cap? Should we actually have a vented cap or is there some other problem that would be causing both the overflow, the overheating and the acting like it is out of gas? Help! Signed, Confused in Denver

You might even want to investigate buying one .

Thank you everyone for all the advice. We're trying adding gas cleaner first. That seems to have helped a bit... it's running well right now in neutral... will see what happens when we try and drive it. Have also been referred to a mechanic that a co-worker of my boyfriend knows and most likely will have him run a diagnostic and do a tune up on it. Will keep all posted. In the meantime the neighbor, who is also an RV owner, has come over and seen it and says he really likes it. The inside has all been redone and looks great. Only thing previous owners hadn't gotten to was replacing the shower pan. Also a previous owner removed the A/C and the last owner, rather than replacing the leaking front window, above the cab, simply "boarded" it up with a fiberglass panel, so at some point we're going to want to have that removed and a new window put in... but all in good time. In the mean time we need to get the engine problems solved....

Hello, my boyfriend and I just purchased a 1986 Toyotal Dolphin. It has 55,000 miles and the engine ran great when we took it for a test drive, albeit a short one. Then today as we were driving it home, it started jerking and shuddering. Was about five blocks from home and the engine quit altogether....just stalled completely out. I restarted it and managed to drive it the five blocks and it stalled again just as I turned to go into the driveway. I got it started again, but had to really gun it to get enough power to get up over the curb to the driveway. From reading these forums, I'm concerned that it may have been sitting for a long time with a tank that was sitting on E. Any suggestions for easy (and relatively inexpensive) options to try first? Neither of us are particularly mechanically inclined so the various options I've read here of dropping gas tank and such are not really an option. We're in the Denver area, can anyone recommend a reliable place to take it? Turns out the place I had been going, has been ripping me off and it turns out that contrary to their ads, they are no longer an AAA authorized repair shop. By the way, it does have the EFI logo on the side. My boyfriend is terrified that this will end up like the used car he bought last year where within two months of purchasing it he had to put $3500 into it.