01 VW cabrio won't start

My 01 cabrio (A3) stalled the other day and will not restart. It will turn over. Fuel pump is making noise, disconnected line at rail and fuel spurtsd out for a second or 2 when key is turn to on. I took out center wire from distributor and placed it near a ground. It will spark repeatedly for a second and then no spark for a second or 2 then some more sparking. I assume this should consistantly spark while the engine is turning over. Before this all happened I pressure washed the engine compartment around the distributor and area looking for a small coolant leak. I removed dist. cap and it is dry and I sprayed WD-40 everywhere and still no luck. Thanks for any help.

Reply to
mark
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First off I don't think spraying WD40 on electrical wires is a good idea. That stuff is flammable. The dist. cap & rotor need to be dry. Are you getting spark at the spark plugs??? Sounds lilke it could be a bad module, or your coil got wet.

Reply to
m6onz5a

Also I should ad that the car has been sitting for 2 weeks now and if water is the culprit it is not drying on it's own

Reply to
mark

ignore that chicken-little on the wd40 thing. it's a good moisture displacer, so will help in that respect. it's not good long term for rubber, but that's a different concern.

regarding no-start condition, you can't presume the spark is consistent if you've observed it to be intermittent. you might have internal flash-over going on so it might not be firing the plugs.

however, backing up, if you stall an engine, even injected engines, you can flood. the way to re-start them is to either leave it for a while, as you have now done, or crank it with your foot on the floor for a few seconds. cranking at "w.o.t.", or wide open throttle, tells the computer to /not/ inject to clear the flooding. after that, you should be able to start in the normal way.

if that doesn't work, let us know if there are any computer codes.

Reply to
jim beam

m6onz5a wrote in news:aa2ee67f-984f-41e1-94a3- snipped-for-privacy@l17g2000yqe.googlegroups.com:

That is the purpose of WD-40: it is /meant/ to be sprayed on plug wires.

The "WD" means "Water Displacing".

Has the OP queried the engine's computer to see if any codes have been recorded? I'd think this sort of even would result in an MIL that never turns off.

Reply to
Tegger

I just checked for codes and none were found. Before this all happened there were several codes and I cleared them and then I did the pressure washing. Does the engine have to run for new codes to be saved?

Reply to
mark

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