Here is the situation:

I havent driven the car in awhile.. and for some reason, it's not starting. Here is a *somewhat* summary. The car would sound like it's *about* to start.. the cranking noise(cam gears would turn, pulley turning.. the whole deal.. sometime i even hear about 1/2 a second of exhaust noise).. but it would never be able to start up.

week 1: car starts fine
week 2: car starts fine
week 3: car would not start.. only cranks
(after about 30 times turning the key.. it starts)
week 4: car starts fine
week 5: car would not start.. (tried about 40-50 times.. no good)

It has been very humid lately in houston and i had parked the car outside under cover. The car is usually started twice or so a week only.

Any suggestions? I tried everything.. checked fuses, even removed the apexi vafc and rewired all the wires to OEM postion. I am out of ideas.

help help help.


Man

 

Hey Show, when was the last time you changed your distributor cap and rotor?? I think this might be the problem. If it has been a while..these items may need changing. When was the last time you changed the spark plugs and wires?? I think now may be the time to do it.
If this does not resolve the problem post back and I will see what else I can come up with.


[Modified by AndyD, 5:18 AM 12/14/2002]

 

nope. never changed those out yet. am i suppose to change those out so soon? (i have 35,000 miles on the car)

wires are 35,000 miles
just changed plugs recently.. about 500 miles

 

The common cause - Main Relay. They usually start to mess up when it's Humid/Hot weather.

 

He may be right but you may also check out t see if your spark plugs are gapped properly and to make sure that the plug wires are on the plugs fine.
If you only have 35K miles on your car...I don't think the distributor cap and rotor need to be changed yet.
Let us know if you figure it out.

 

Well, I have a few ideas.

Do you leave the battery unhooked when it's sitting? There might be an unexeptably high, constant parasitic drain on the battery when it's not being driven. Something you wouldn't notice when it's being driven b/c the alternator is working. So--run an open circuit check on the battery, and make sure it reads over 12.6ish. That should be enough to crank it over. To check for that parasitic drain, take an ammeter, and run it in series with the battery line while the car is off. There's probably even a spec for it in the helms. If you have all kinds of stereo/alarm/security stuff in there, they tend to drain the battery when the car is off. If you do find something sucking amps (well, milliamps in this case), start pulling fuses/relays until the drain get's back to a reasonable level. It's never going to be zero, OBD systems have to still be monitoring HC levels and such, and most of all what's going on in the charcoal cannister, and other backup memories.

My other idea, was fuel quality. Did you use any fuel stabilizer before you let it sit? Gas only retains its properties for about 28 days... just something to keep in mind. The timeline you put up doesn't totally coincide with that magic 28 number, but it's always a possibility, especially if there was any water in the gas to begin with. Fuel dehydrator / dry gas, what have you. Maybe give one of those a shot. And for the ... $1 ... that a bottle of dehydrator costs... I think it might be worth it to run it through.

This may sound lame, but it works. You need 4 things to run an engine.... air, fuel, compression and spark.

Air is easy to check for. Pull the intake/airbox/filter/CAI off and make sure there's nothing blocked.

Fuel is easy to check for, make sure you have pressure at the rail. Loosen the banjo bolt, and if fuel starts to spray out a little, you're probably ok on the fuel pressure side.

Compression, big deal. Run a quick compression test. Make sure the numbers look good.

Spark. Well, it's a little harder to check for spark, but... you can pull wires and put spark testors in the ends that the plus normally go into. This will tell you if you have spark before the plug. Which eliminates loss of contact between rotor and cap, and cap and wires. There's spark plug testors as well. If you don't mind being a little ghetto, you could try to ground the wire to other places, to make sure you have sufficient coil dwell to build up enough voltage to jump a large air gap... but now you're starting to take the risk of getting zapped.

If all that stuff works out well, then you have to look elsewhere, like contaminated fuel, low battery voltage, and a few other things. But it really shouldn't take more than about 30-45 minutes to check for the 4 main things. Seriously.. once you do it a few times, it'll really come in helpful in narrowing things down when you can't get your car started.

(edit) Forgot something else. Check the large positive cable from the battery to the starter, and the connections on the battery terminals themselves. (/edit)

Hope that helps somebody
-Erik


[Modified by thatchmaster, 1:03 PM 12/14/2002]