Stalling after short trips

Vickie wrote: [symptoms snipped]

Does the stalling happen on *every* short trip?

In older cars this is a perfect example of vapor-lock: boiling fuel in the line.

Do you have fuel-injection? Can you trace the fuel line from the tank into the engine compartment?

Thank you for the reply.

Yes, the car has fuel injection.

The stalling does not occur on every short trip. The stalling only occurs at one time a day, when being restarted after the first short trip of the day...but even then it doesn't do this every day...which is what's making the troubleshooting of it so difficult. Once it decides to stall after the first errand of the day and I finally get it past the point where car stops feeling like it will stall, the car will run smoothly for every stop/errand afterwards regardless of time/distance.

I imagine my husband could trace the fuel line to the engine, if the car was not sitting in the Toyota parking lot, but what should he be looking for when doing that?

What can I do about vapor lock? (When I say "I" what can I ask the mechanics to try?) Is there something easy that can cause vapor lock?

Thank you- Vickie

That description does not sound like vapor-lock which would happen whenever the engine got to a certain temperature.

In order to get more responses you should give a more detailed description of the failure. I took it that your car would crank but would not start. I also took it that if you let the car sit a while (how long) it would start later.

I have seen such behaviour with a bad fuel pump, but never with such regularity as you describe.

Vickie, it sounds like your automatic choke/cold start device is still on and the car is just barely warm enough to not need it. Thus, at this "mid-point", your engine is getting unneeded rich mixture. That's why when you drive it further & warm it up completely, the rich mixture is not furnished & so it starts fine at that point. Tell a good, qualified mechanic what it is doing, and he should be able to essentially shorten the rich-mixture time being given. Could be as simple as a temp. sensor gone bad. Or it could need a mechanical adjustment on the carb, assuming it's not fuel-injected. HTH & good luck. sdlomi