Ok, I definately need some ideas and some insight. My 92 DA's been having starting problems for weeks. As the days have been going on and on, the problems have been getting progressively worse.

On most occasions, the car will take a lot of cranking to start. When it starts, it runs rich and acts like it's bogging until it gets moving. Once I hit around 4,000 rpm or so, the boggy-ness clears up and the car runs fine and idles fine until I shut it off. Sometimes, it becomes so fuel soaked at startup that it only cranks and sometimes stumbles, but never starts. Turning off the fuel (I have a switch to kill the fuel pump) to make a lean condition at start actually helps and sometimes gets it started.

For a few days, the problem pretty much disappeared. Today...well... it's back. While I was driving (not hard, steadily accelerating) to school this afternoon, the car suddenly started acting like the boggy condition as described in the last paragraph. Only this time, it ran all the way up 7k and never cleared up. There was a strong fuel stench, as well. Well, after pulling over and checking things out in the engine bay, I saw no leaks and nothing obviously wrong. What gives? I drove the rest of the way to school, about 4 miles, and it just continued acting as though it was bogging. It was similar to the feeling of running on three cylinders... low power, choppiness, almost sounds like it was missing. However, no codes, no CEL.

After the car sat for an hour, I tried to start it and it just gave me trouble; cranking but not starting. Shutting the fuel pump off got it barely idling, turning it back on got it running, but choppily. I can't think of a better way to describe its running than "choppily", durrr.... Sounded like it was missing. But whatever. About a mile away from school, it miraculously cleared up and the problem was gone again.. I can't figure this out.

I have changed: plugs, wires, ignitor (5k miles ago), coil (5k miles ago), cap, rotor, and injectors...I resoldered the connections on the main relay last week. All good.

Fuel pressure is good, MAP sensor appears to have a slightly odd voltage but no code (I took off my SAFC about 5k miles ago, but it read 7 psi of boost and vacuum correctly from the MAP), TPS is good, compression is good, motor was rebuilt about 20k miles ago with entire fresh gaskets, rings, seals, valve seals, retainers, etc. I'm running a nearly stock LS Uberdata map (slightly advanced timing). Timing off the distributor is set at about 16 BTDC.

Motor is B18A1, intake, exhaust, Crower 402 cams... If you guys have ANY ideas at all, shoot them out at me; I've tried everywhere and spoken to so many people that it's stupid. I'm gonna tear apart the distributor again and make sure all the connections are tight and that the coil and ignitor are still in spec.. but past this I don't know where to look!

 

I tightened some connections at the ignitor/coil and changed the cap and rotor again (rotor was looking gnarly)... And it definately helped, but if any of you actually read that big ol' post, give me some of your thoughts. Anything helps.