My TN's not running. It has fuel (admittedly, not much fuel, about 4-8l) it has spark, but it won't start.

I was driving down Dandenong road, when the car started sputtering all of a sudden, then conked out whilst going through the booze bus. After starting again, I got it rolling about 50m before it conked out again. At this stage I assumed it was just out of petrol, though I should still have had about 20-50km left (TBH, I was looking for a servo) After tramming it to the petrol station about 5km back, I returned with a fuel can, and proceeded to empty that into the tank.

I tried starting the car, it just kept cranking and cranking. After about 5 minutes, it caught, ran for about 3 seconds then stalled. It repeated this again after a minute of cranking.

I poured the dregs of the can into the throat of the carby, and it ran for a few seconds, then stalled again. By this time, I needed to leave the car, as the battery was run down, and I'd need to PT it to my folks place, otherwise I'd be sleeping in it.

The car's currently in a Clearway Tow Away, it's OK until 4pm tomorrow afternoon. Any ideas onto what's not working. I was planning to put another 5 litres in tomorrow after my drive test for a bus job. Any sensible idea on what's carked it, and can I fix it for, um, $4.28 tomorrow?

provided you have spark and fuel sorted, i'd then be looking at fuel cut solenoid (if working correctly, you should hear a click from the carby when you turn ignition to on), vac leak (hose, gasket?)

if you take the fuel line to the carby float off, is there fuel coming out when the car is cranking (the fuel pump stops when the engine is not running but should turn on when the key is on START), if no fuel there, then fuel relay, a fuse somewhere or fuel pump's died.

not a collapsed cat again is it? lol

probably need more fuel in the tank to pickup

could water have got into the carby check filter

leaves dissy/ coil/ plugs .

See Below.

Took it on the freeway this evening, after putting another 15 litres in, so there should have been at least 20 litres present. The car misses and surges at freeway speeds, got to the stge on the return trip I could not continue on the freeway, as the car nearly went total failure going up the hill near Stud Road. (It got to the stage where I could go no faster than 40km/h)

It is either the fuel pump or the carby, but I can't afford to replace both.

did you check the secondary vacume pots that work the butterfly

efi conversion pending

undo the fuel line at the carby turn ign on to test fuel flow it is electric so it either works or it doesnt

other may be plugs leads dissy or coil

The car misses and surges at freeway speeds, got to the stge on the return trip I could not continue on the freeway, as the car nearly went total failure going up the hill near Stud Road. (It got to the stage where I could go no faster than 40km/h)
Check whether the fuel filter is blocked. That fits the symptoms and could easily happen if you ran the tank nearly dry. The filter is cheap and easy to replace on the carby model.

Agree with coldamus - your symptoms sound very like dirty fuel/blocked filter.

or a small blockage in the line. still lets some through just not enough??

Agree with coldamus - your symptoms sound very like dirty fuel/blocked filter.
Fuel filter was only changed about 4,000km ago. Shouldn't have got blocked yet!

Put in $60 of fuel last night (my housemate wanted to go to Queenscliff, and I'm good at random stuff like that). It's still missing, but not as bad, so I'm suspecting that it'll be gone after the EFI conversion.

Fuel filter was only changed about 4,000km ago. Shouldn't have got blocked yet!

Depends! In my first magna, I got a bad load of fuel once. The service station tanks must have been nearly empty and I got the sludge from the bottom. I went through about 10 fuel filters in quick succession before it got back to normal. So now I'm paranoid about fuel filters whenever there's a fuel problem.