Hey guys,

Last fall my car started starting really rough. I would have to floor it to get it to fire. It would happen about 50% of the time. The car had done this a handful of times since I got it 3 years ago. But now it's like clockwork. Sometimes it happens when it's hot sometimes when cold. When it does fire it only runs on a few cylinders then after 30 seconds they all start firing and it's fine.

Here's what I've done so far. New accel coil to replace bad stock coil last summer, I pulled the opti too when it was off the road to check it out. Everything looked fine just a few rust flakes laying in the bottom from one of the internal shields. Cleaned everything up and painted the shield inside the opti and sealed it with silicon and put it back togther. I also modified it to make it a vented type unit. Car ran great for 3 months....

Car has accel plug wires from the previous owner which seemed almost new.

When it first started acting up I pulled the injector rail figuring the injectors were sticking. They seemed fine. Primed up the fuel pump and no leaking.

Got it home from school and let it sit over the winter. Now I pulled it out of storage and put new plugs in. 4 of the plugs were wet with gas when I pulled them. They were pretty wore out. Previous owner had bosch platinums in there so I replaced with NKG tr-55 plugs gapped at .044". Put them all in and fired it up. Now it hard starts every time. Once it's running it runs great though.

I have a fuel pressure gauge too and checked that before I put the new plugs in. Fuel pressure stays where it should be all the time. When I turn the car off it drops about 5 - 8 psi and holds steady there. The car dropped from 35 psi to 10 psi with the car sitting over night.

Oil smells fine. Pulled the FPR vac. line and it smelled of gas. But the fuel pressure seems fine so I don't know what's up with that.

I searched last night and thought maybe the coolant temperature sensor was bad. So I went out this morning and hooked up my laptop with freescan and the sensor seems to be reading correctly, I then drove around the block and logged two files. Here they are.

http://www.filefactory.com/file/311c58/
http://www.filefactory.com/file/7f4a7b/

Well I hope somebody can help me figure out what's wrong with the car. I miss driving it and would hate to leave it sit for the summer too.

Thank you,

OldSchoolSS

 

Little update on the problem. I pulled the fuel rail again and this time had my father turn the key on and off. Every once in a while some fuel would spit out for a second then stop. I put some pieces of brown paper grocery bag under the injectors and kept priming the pump. 4 of the injectors were leaking a very little bit, not even enough to cause a visible drip. I ordered racetronix 42lb/hr delphi injectors and installed them today. I changed the injector constant in the computer to 43.2 since it still seemed like it was rich at 42.9 and at 43.1. Now the car seems to be about right on the money as far as fuel mixture goes.

But alas it still will not want to start once in a while. Once i get it running it runs and idles great. Could the new plugs be fouled out by running it for 15 minutes with the old injectors? I'm trying to run this old tank of gas out of the car and get a fresh tank in.

Any ideas on why it is still hard to start?

 

Ttt

 

Anyone?