Just recently purchased a 88 chevy 1500 from my uncle, truck has had a hard life he used it on his farm since it was new.

Paid $400 for it, little beat up 274k miles.

Truck has a issue starting. It normally takes around 2 tries to get started.

It has a TBI 350, and my first thought was warn rings or something along that line causing low compression.

But I noticed when I was cranking it I can smell fuel, with the hood shut in the cab.

So I did a bit of research and I thought Coolant Tempurature Sensor. But the truck runs fine at idle....Then the thought hit me fuel guage does not work so woundering if it ran out of gas enough that the fuel pump is on its last stage of life?

Just need some help to organize these thoughts and how I should go about chasing down the problem.

Truck runs and drives great, just doesn't like to start.

 

I would find that fuel leak first, cycle the key a couple of times while looking for leaks along the fuel lines and take the air cleaner off and check around the TBI unit,you can check the temp sensor against a chart to see if its bad temp = a certain resistance you can get that chart on google or Haynes manual has it

 

there is no visable fuel leak, I can just smell it. The lines are not rusted or anything like that.

If it was the CTS would the engine temperature still show up properly on the guage?