'97 2.4L won't crank when hot....Flooding? Clogged Fuel Filter

My son's '97 2.4L is periodically stranding him....He drives for a bit, gets it to operating temp, shuts off and runs into a store, then comes out in 5-10 minutes and it starts for a second then dies and won't re-crank and smells like fuel...but no leakage onto pavement or dripping fuel. If we let is sit and cool it cranks fine without any fuel smell.

Does anyone have any experience with this kind of problem....it's got 336K miles on it and we do not know when fuel filter was last changed....or could we be getting fuel vaporization from hot block?....or perhaps my 16 year old just naïve and flooding the engine?....truck also seems to have an intermittently rough idle.

thanks in advance for any ideas.

 

reading here suggests old and leaking injectors...thoughts???

 

Sounds like it could be a evap solinoid leaking. Next time he drives it and runs into the store have him take gascap off before he leaves truck. Then put it back on before he restarts it.

 

He would have a check engine light if that was the case.

I like the leaky injector suggestion. Bad injectors don't throw a code.

 

Process of elimination. I've seen leaking evap valves leak and not set a code. Yes a leaking injector could cause the problem also.