Hard to start

[speedjunkie]

This problem started out back in April after Deal's Gap, but it's gotten much worse recently. It started out as a hot-start issue, only having problems when it was already warm. Now it practically won't start at all when it's warm and I'm having problems starting when it's cold now too, and that didn't used to be a problem.


Here are things I've noticed and the little bit of troubleshooting I've done so far, along with what I'm planning to do...

-I'm not losing or burning any oil or coolant.
-I tried the deflood method (pulling the green relay and turning the car over), but I didn't do what I normally do as the deflood method (pulling the green relay AND the spark plugs and turning the car over). There was absolutely NO change, so I don't think it's flooding
-Injector duty cycle is between 0 and 3% during cranking, but I'm not sure if that is an indicator because I'm not sure what it's supposed to be lol
-I haven't done a compression test yet, but I'm going to do a cold test and hot test
-I've heard of crank angle sensors being a problem too so I'm planning on checking those
-I've wondered about it being a failing coil, so I'm going to check those


And here are details about the engine and car...

-I rebuilt the engine last July and it has about 15k miles on it
-I have water injection, I'm injecting 2-cycle through an OMP adapter
-I'm running about 24psi of boost on a pretty safe tune
-I have stock coils with a HKS Twin Power
-I have ID 725s and 2000s that I just installed a year or two ago
-I'm currently using a Power FC but I'm switching to an Adaptronic Select


I can't remember anything else off the top of my head. Can anyone think of anything else I could check or what it might be?

[Rotary Evolution]

first i would check the engine before bothering with anything else, just do a compression test and get that out of the way.

if you have a powerFC you can use the hand controller to raise the injector correction % to see if it is just not getting enough fuel on cranking. it will reset to 1.000 when you turn the key off so you won't be screwing anything up. just make a note of starting settings before making any changes though, in case you start dicking with the wrong settings.

the crank sensors usually are not a problem with the powerFC, mainly with the haltech. but poor wiring can cause a poor signal on any ECU so i would check and make sure the wires leading to them are not frayed/broken or that the front main seal has filled them up with oil. if the tach is bouncing on crank and the PFC is reading RPMs you can probably eliminate this as a possibility.

a faulty leading coil will also make the car very difficult to start but you would also notice a huge lack of power at all RPMs.

[speedjunkie]

Yeah I'm planning on doing the comp tests first. I have a piston tester and have never had much luck with them being accurate but we'll see what happens lol.

Yeah I've never had a problem with crank sensors but I read about others having problems. The engine harness is in good shape. Put it on new in 2008 and have had it wrapped in heat reflective tape to keep it nice. I'll check that anyway though. I do get up to about 260rpm during cranking though.

The car does seem a little sluggish but maybe I'm just hoping its that rather than a bad engine lol. I'll try raising the injector correction too though.

Thanks!

[speedjunkie]

I did a cold and hot compression test, but I don't think my tester is any good. I got around 40-50psi on both the cold and hot compression tests, but the car started tonight and I don't think it would even run if it was that low on compression.

When I took the plugs out, THAT is when I noticed a problem. And I feel like an idiot for not thinking of it before. I don't remember when I put these plugs in but they were toast! Here are the pics...
Front Trailing...
http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f9/speedjunkie23/null_zps48d5db06.jpg (http://s44.photobucket.com/user/speedjunkie23/media/null_zps48d5db06.jpg.html)
http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f9/speedjunkie23/null_zpsc5703f27.jpg (http://s44.photobucket.com/user/speedjunkie23/media/null_zpsc5703f27.jpg.html)

Front Leading...
http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f9/speedjunkie23/null_zps401acd01.jpg (http://s44.photobucket.com/user/speedjunkie23/media/null_zps401acd01.jpg.html)
http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f9/speedjunkie23/null_zps41b1ff18.jpg (http://s44.photobucket.com/user/speedjunkie23/media/null_zps41b1ff18.jpg.html)

Rear Trailing...
http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f9/speedjunkie23/null_zpsd0485978.jpg (http://s44.photobucket.com/user/speedjunkie23/media/null_zpsd0485978.jpg.html)
http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f9/speedjunkie23/null_zps251361b6.jpg (http://s44.photobucket.com/user/speedjunkie23/media/null_zps251361b6.jpg.html)

Rear Leading...
http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f9/speedjunkie23/null_zpsddb26d0e.jpg (http://s44.photobucket.com/user/speedjunkie23/media/null_zpsddb26d0e.jpg.html)
http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f9/speedjunkie23/null_zpse729e26f.jpg (http://s44.photobucket.com/user/speedjunkie23/media/null_zpse729e26f.jpg.html)

As you can probably tell, the front leading was the worst one. All of them were worn down to a point but that one was worn down about half way. After I swapped the new plugs in, I didn't have as much of a problem starting it, albeit it wasn't as easy as it should have been.

I started it again after it was warm, after warming it up for the hot compression test, and as when it was cold, it started, but still not a normal startup. So after that I swapped in a different leading coil, but there wasn't any noticeable change.

That's all I did for the night. I will continue to check and try other things.

[JL1RX7]

Is the battery, alternator, starter all good? No sticky starter solenoids or relays?

[speedjunkie]

As far as I know they're all good. I haven't checked them. I might end up doing that though. Last night when I was starting it I had it on the battery charger though.

[speedjunkie]

I've noticed that my battery voltage during driving is around 14v and up, so I'm not too worried about the alternator and the battery and starter aren't showing any indication of being bad either. My buddy that has tuned for me before is pretty sure it's just the tune. I'm going to swap in my Adaptronic ECU and see where it puts me. Although I'd rather fix the problem on the PFC if possible.

I recently swapped all my gauges to Speedhut gauges (speedo, tach and fuel gauge along with the SPA gauges I had already for oil, fuel and water), and I've been having problems getting the fuel gauge calibrated correctly. I was coming to work with the car a bit ago and the fuel gauge said empty all of a sudden (it's usually on full), so I drove straight to the gas station. It took 8.5 gallons. So I still have that issue. Then the damn car didn't want to start again. ARGH!!!! Other than that it's been starting alright.

[JL1RX7]

I would check your wiring. Might be a short in there somewhere playing havoc on you. I would still get the battery checked out. It could have a bad cell and still "act" normal. Advance does the stuff for free so always an easy check to get it out of the way.

[speedjunkie]

You're talking about the wiring for the fuel gauge? I'm gonna test the sending unit too, if there is a test for it lol. Yeah I might go ahead and get the battery checked out too. The car pretty much fired right up this afternoon. I'm not sure what was different, but it started REALLY fast compared to normal.

[JL1RX7]

Yea. Never know if you have a short or an open. Again start eliminating things. Intermittent issues are the hardest. Got to eliminate almost everything to find the problem.

[Rotary Evolution]

jeebus, those plugs must have had about 20k+ on them. you should really pay more attention to the tune up items on a car pushing that sort of boost level.

i would try to get the engine compression tested to verify how healthy it really is still.

[speedjunkie]

Yea. Never know if you have a short or an open. Again start eliminating things. Intermittent issues are the hardest. Got to eliminate almost everything to find the problem.

Yeah I'll figure it out. It's aggravating but for right now I'm more concerned with the starting issue...until I take it to SS16 and REALLY need my fuel gauge lol

jeebus, those plugs must have had about 20k+ on them. you should really pay more attention to the tune up items on a car pushing that sort of boost level.

i would try to get the engine compression tested to verify how healthy it really is still.

Yeah I can't believe I hadn't thought of that before. It seemed like I just replaced them so it didn't cross my mind. I'm going to keep track of it now though. I'm documenting the mileage so I can see if I have other issues that are wearing out the plugs faster. I'm still going to compression test.

I put in my new Adaptronic last night and it started pretty easily, but it didn't want to idle. Then I remembered I had disconnected the ISC and switched to manual idle in the PFC, so I plugged that back in and other than running super rich at idle, it's idling great too.

[speedjunkie]

I wired up the Innovate TC-4 so I could log AFRs but I need to get at least one more cable, or probably two since the one I have isn't really long enough to route it the way I want. It's a 2.5 serial cable and the 4ft one from Innovate isn't long enough, so I'm going to a local place, Centennial Electronics, tomorrow to see if they have one long enough. Anyway, I still need to do some more reading I guess and figure out this wiring. I will say though, it's insane how much easier the car starts on this ECU, almost perfectly. I'm trying lean out the idle some but it's tough when you can't read the AFR gauge anymore lol.

[speedjunkie]

Well after working on it this weekend I have a few more issues lol.

I figured out how to route the Innovate cable so it would work and I ordered another one and had it overnighted. I'm sure glad I spent that money because it was useless. I think the TC-4 is either bad or just not functioning for some reason. With the cables routed per the instructions, it won't let anything through to the ECU or the wideband gauge, but if you plug the cable from the LC-1 directly into the ECU or the gauge you get a reading. The way it's supposed to be routed according to the directions is terminator plug to LC-1 in, LC-1 out to TC-4 in, TC-4 out to XD-16 in, XD-16 out to ECU in.

Then I think my wideband took a crap altogether because it's reading 2.5 AFR now, or sometimes it will read either 2.5 AFR or completely lean (20.9) like when it's under decel. I tried an extra sensor I had, and did a free air calibration on both of the sensors and nothing worked. So now I'm looking at getting a new wideband, probably an MTX-L.

My buddy came down to tune this weekend and we discovered that the MAP sensor selected was the internal 4 bar that's in the ECU, but what I was using was a GM 3 bar. We disconnected the MAP sensor altogether and started the car without one, revved it and everything, and it all worked beautifully without a MAP sensor. When it was still on the 3 bar, we selected external MAP sensor and it wouldn't even start the car, but we realized we hadn't calibrated it according to the instructions. On the internal 4 bar sensor, the car will start but it's really tough like it used to be. It makes me wonder though if it's still not a tuning issue, because I figure if it was mechanical it should have been hard to start without a MAP sensor as well.

I've been talking to Andy Wyatt that owns Adaptronic and he's super nice and helpful, and he also deals with Innovate products so he's able to help a bit there too.

I also did some troubleshooting on the fuel gauge issue and discovered my fuel level sender is still good, so I'm thinking either the cable disconnected behind the gauge cluster or the gauge is jacked. I had even changed the ground on the wiring to the same ground as the fuel pump wiring.

[speedjunkie]

After talking with Innovate, they suggested hooking the LC-1 up to LM Programmer (on my laptop) and seeing what fuel setting is selected. I checked it last night and it had switched itself to a custom fuel setting, so I switched it back to gasoline. He told me I'd have to do a full calibration so I'm planning on doing that tonight and see if it fixes the wideband. I'm still waiting to hear more about the TC-4 and why it won't let readings through.

[JL1RX7]

Sounds like you are on the right path to fixing things! Hope it does the trick for you.

[speedjunkie]

Nope. Wideband is jacked. On gasoline it's wigging out. Buying an MTX-L most likely.

[Rotary Evolution]

there should be a default setting for the stock sensor calibration in the software. that is what it uses for the outputs to the gauge and the other output ports.