I'm the original owner of a 87 GT 2.8L. It has sat garaged for the last five years and now that I'm retired I want to bring it back to life. The engine was totally rebuilt at about 125,000 miles, it now has 168,000. Before I stoped driving it had some kind of ignition or fuel injector problem what wouldn't allow it to run without the engine missing in 1 or more cylinders. I spent $1500 trying to let local shops fix it with no luck. The shop that rebuild the engine thought maybe the head had problems and they pulled one head, everything was fine. They tried replacing one injector. Plugs, timing, all the usual tune-ups. I don't know if they looked at the error codes, that's going to be one of my first investigations. The car has been totally reliable for 29 years! About the only repairs I've had to make was the shift linkage when it was still under warranty and one ball joint went out. The problem began when one of the cylinders was missing when started up but went away once it warmed up. That symptom slowly decayed to the point it wouldn't run smoothly once warmed up and I think it progressed to a second cylinder. I tried replacing the distributor cap as I have done once before. Didn't help. My local mechanic checked the ignition (diagnostic machine) and didn't really find anything. My only suspicion is maybe the plug wires are bad, that's something that would progressively get worse. They were replaced when the engine was rebuilt but I'm going to try new ones anyway.

Anyway, my first question is what do I need to do before I try starting it up?
I've got a new battery, I'm going to drain whatever liquid is in the gas tank and replace it with fresh gas. (maybe with some injector cleaner it it??) The oil level is full and the color of the oil is still clear, I suspect the oil was changed sometime before it started acting up. Do I need to pull the plugs and spray some oil in?

Thanks in advance, Tone

5 years is long enough to do lots of bad things to a car. The most likely bad thing is that the injectors are all stuck and the fuel tank needs cleaning. You may get lucky, but probably not. there are many threads on the forum describing what someone had to do for a "car sat" problem, for example:

https://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum2/HTML/136497.html

[This message has been edited by Gall757 (edited 09-19-2020).]

Thanks for the reply. I did read that thread. I didn't think about the injectors being stuck. Can they be removed and cleaned?

Any suggestions on the electrical problem it may still have?

quote Originally posted by Tone: I didn't think about the injectors being stuck. Can they be removed and cleaned?

Yes, Cleaning services are reasonable. If you can remove and install the injectors, you save a lot of money. Otherwise, look for that veteran mechanic who knows GM '80s technology. Injector cleaner is really not going to help much.

quote Any suggestions on the electrical problem it may still have?

It may not be an electrical problem. If you can prep the car and it starts, trouble-shooting the ignition would come next.

[This message has been edited by Gall757 (edited 09-19-2020).]