For many many years I used regular seafoam in the brake booster line and gas tank. I used DeepCreep in the throttle body once and since then have had some trouble starting my car.

Before deepcreep, my car would start over everytime after using the starter for about a second and a half. Currently I am having more than the usual trouble starting the car.

I have installed a new stock starter (lt4 starter did not fit properly so I bit the bullet and used a stock starter). I can see the starter moves the motor at about 200rpm but the car does not like to start. It seems to crank fine and semi-sorta want to start with some very low level sputtering. Eventually, it will catch (if I'm lucky) and run fine. However, when I turn the car off, even after letting it heat up and run for a while, it will have trouble starting again.

Any ideas?

 

I had a similar problem, turned out to be the IAC valve. Can you scan for codes?

 

Sounds like you may have flooded the IAC passage. I saw this happen to a guy who installed the bottom plate on the TB, and didn't tighten the screws all the way. A few drops of coolant reached the IAC passage, and plugged it up.

 

There are no codes. How do I unclog the IAC?

 

If you have a scanner, use it to observe what the PCM is commanding the IAC valve to do. If the engine is about to stall, the PCM should be increasing the IAC counts. It should keep doing that until they are maxed out. If that happens, and it still stalls, either the IAC motor is faulty or the passage is plugged.

Take the throttle body off, take the bottom plate off, and clean it out. I would also pull the IAC motor out of the bottom plate and clean it. You will need a new bottom gasket. Shoebox has the part # for the top/bottom gasket kit.

 

I used to be able to use datamaster but that was with a cable for an old laptop...laptops these days don't have those serial cable inputs...

So this is an easy fix?

 

I've given you one possible solution. You have to check it out to see if that's what it is. No guarantees.........

Are you sure you got the inlet elbow back on the throttle body correctly, and didn't tear it? Is the MAF harness connector attached firmly, with no damaged pins? How did you put the Seafoam through the throttle body? Is it possible you knocked the coolant temp sensor connector off? Once it starts running, you indicate it runs fine...... for how long? Have you driven it an appreciable distance?

 

USB to Serial converters example

even bestbuy has them

 

Speedy,

Thanks for the links, but no thanks for the insults. I haven't had much time in the past few years to dedicate to working on the t/a and I've lost a lot of interest due to other things in my life. I guess that is part of growing up...

Inj, I know it's not guaranteed to be the end-all solution, but your thought process seems like a very good idea of where to look. I have taken it out for a few runs and have had trouble starting it back up. The car reached closed loop and I did hit some full throttle blasts just to wake it, and the neighbors, up.

 

Car started up on the third crank today without much issue. Inj, you know the conditions today are 'nice'.... about 36* and very sunny under all this snow cover. Car would not start a few days ago and I killed the battery trying to start it. Today, very few issues. It takes more than it used to to get it going and has since the deep creep. Once running, the car idles completely fine...the whole issue is just getting it to kick over.

 

How old is your opti and high tension wires? They can be a real weak link as far as hard starting-

 

Opti is probably less than 10k miles or so....as far as spark plug wires, I converted them to the OTVC red wires...made by Taylor? I did this when I did the headers, probably 20-30k miles ago.

 

If it starts easier when its warmer, it could be a problem with the coolant temp sensor. It may not be richening the mixture enough to allow it to start on a very cold day.

Or it could be the engine isn't getting enough air to start, and the correct coolant temp sets the mixture so rich, the lack of air through the idle port leaves it too rich....

Many possibilities.

 

I guess the answer then is to run a scanner on it to see what's up and what it thinks is going on when I power it on...

Would the seafoam mess up the coolant sensor? *shrug*

 

Only if you knocked the harness connector off the sensor, or hit it with something when you were using the Seafoam.