lately for the past few weeks its been pretty hard to start my car, its a 96 with a 180*tstat. when i crank it it just cranks but doesnt start, and i have to give it gas to get the engine running. once it gets running the rpms will go up to about 3000 on their own and then settle back down to around 950 or 1000. ive replaced the air filter, fuel filter, new plugs, wires, new oil change and filter, it didnt pass smog due to high nox. i got some stuff from kragen that goes in the gas tank thats guaranteed to get the car to pass smog, i guess it cleans the injectors and such, but im still having the hard starting problem. i figured that would have fixed the problem, but im going to take it in for a second smog and we'll see if it did any good. also i dont even know what these things are but they look like vacuum lines, but they are just metal pipes that go into the throttle body. there are 2 different vacuum lines coming out of it, and sometimes when i try to start the car one or both of them will pop off the throttle body. i have put new rubber connectors on them, and they still pop off occasionally. does anyone have any idea what these metal pipe vacuum lines do?? im thinking the hard starting has something to do with them maybe being clogged or something? but ive taken the vacuum lines off and they are not clogged, i am just thinking maybe whatever they are connected to might be clogged. ive looked at the charcoal canister which one of the lines goes to, and there is no smell of fuel or anything coming from the pipe or the canister. i dont really know what else could be going on.. but if anyone could help that would be great. ive run an odb2 scanner and i didnt have any codes. thanks

Sounds like your fuel pressure regulator is faulty. Have you tried hooking up a fuel pressure tester to see what kind of pressure you're getting?

how would i test the fuel pressure? where is the fuel pressure regulator located?? i took off the throttle body yesterday to see if anything was clogged, but it was nice and clean.. even the egr pipe was clean. i was thinking it was clogged which is why i was failing smog, but now i am leaning towards the egr valve itself being bad. the fuel additives didnt do anything to reduce my nox, by the way..

You have to give it gas to get the engine started? If you have to push the pedal while cranking to get started check the tps- Throttle Position sensor. If Im not mistaken, this is a 0-5 volt potentiometer type device that tells 'mother' where the throttle is at any given moment. A voltage is used for this function. You can use a voltmeter to determine if it is getting the 5 volt 'supply' and if it is, you can check to see the "output" voltage that the computer uses to refrence the angle of the throttle plate. {position}. This voltage will vary from 0-5 volts depending on throttle angle. My point is, they can go bad, and tell mother that the throttle is open when it is actually closed, or vicversa.

Of course, you may have anothr problem, however, pressing the pedal to get it started points me to this first. I hope you find the solution.