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Car doesn't start...

Car is a 1999 Toyota MR2 (N/A mk2).

Over the past 3 years, it's probably started on 3 cylinders around 3 times - quite intermittant & rare occurances.

In November last year I replaced the dizzy cap & rotor arm (genuine Toyota parts, and the parts they replaced were the originals) and also the spark plugs with some platinums. About a month later the car failed to start, tried again and it failed, tried a third time and it started on 3 cylinders, tried again and it was fine.

Last month (due to the 3 cylinders malarky not being sorted) I replaced the original HT leads (again, with genuine Toyota parts).

Car has been running fine (but the 3 cylinder malarky is intermittant anyway - and not moisture related either). Parked the car on my sloped drive on a Friday evening - BTW, the car was very low on fuel. Washed it on Saturday, come Monday and it just won't start.

The starter seems to be working fine, battery is fine. Thought it must be due to fuel not being able to get through to the engine with the driveway being sloped - so put in 5 litres (I've since put in another 20 litres!) but to no avail. I checked the ignition coil and that seemed fine as far as I could tell. I do get sparks at the plugs. Also my fuel pump seems to be working. I got no error codes when checking the diagnostics.

Tried starting with the accelerator pressed down, then checked the plugs - a tiny bit wet. So fuel is getting through the injectors.

AFAIK if there's a fault with the air induction - this would chuck up a diagnostic error.

Any ideas of what could be wrong given that it was working one minute fine, then not the next? Can't imagine the timing has gone out while sat on the driveway for the weekend :-S

Reply to
Johnny
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First guess would be the crank position sensor or whatever triggers the spark. These have a habit of going intermittent before failing. An analogue dwell meter across the coil can often give indication of one or more plugs not getting a spark - ie if they're all firing correctly at cranking you should get regular pulsing from the meter.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Could be the dizzy wet, sometimes this happens after washing the car This is a common problem with mr2's. Take the dizzy cap off and check condition. The way i would check is pull one lead of a spark plug off push back the rubber casing so the metal connector is exposed then hold the lead about 3 mm from the engine, get someone to crank the car over. You should see it arching, be carefull you can get one hell of jolt from the lead. Do this for all leads.

You could also take one plug out and check the condition of it, i would imagine it would be wet from the petrol as its not burning. Also good way to check fuel is getting through.

You have checked the error codes by jumping te1 and e1 on the diagnostic plug in the engine bay. You should see a constant flashing engine management light on the dashboard with the ignition on position

2 if their is no errors.
Reply to
chip_one

Could be the dizzy wet, sometimes this happens after washing the car This is a common problem with mr2's. Take the dizzy cap off and check condition. The way i would check is pull one lead of a spark plug off push back the rubber casing so the metal connector is exposed then hold the lead about 3 mm from the engine, get someone to crank the car over. You should see it arching, be carefull you can get one hell of jolt from the lead. Do this for all leads.

You could also take one plug out and check the condition of it, i would imagine it would be wet from the petrol as its not burning. Also good way to check fuel is getting through.

You have checked the error codes by jumping te1 and e1 on the diagnostic plug in the engine bay. You should see a constant flashing engine management light on the dashboard with the ignition on position

2 if their is no errors.
Reply to
chip_one

As I said, it's not moisture related. The previous times of starting on 3 cylinders have been completely dry weather. I did check inside just to be sure - it was bone dry. Also the rubber seal around the dizzy cap is brand new too.

I did this on 2 of the leads, with the spark plug attached to the end of the lead. As I said, the leads were replaced around a month ago.

Yeah, slightly wet as previously stated.

Yep, that's exactly how I did it. I also did the fuel pump check by bridging Fp and +B.

Reply to
Johnny

you could always try searching through

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and maybe post it on there. going to be hard one to figure out

Reply to
chip_one

I already have ;-)

Reply to
Johnny

are you sure you don't have an air lock in the fuel system that's leading to fuel draining backward? Quite a common thing on diesels, not sure if it would apply the same to petrol - don't see why not.

It is poss' to buy some aerosol fluid that 'bubbles' when you spray it onto a leaking hose etc

Might be worth a try

Reply to
richard.ingall

I've heard of a couple of owners having problems restarting their cars after running out of petrol. One of these owners bump started their car - although mine is a later model with a cat, so I'm not going to do that. Another owner eventually got it going after a *lot* of attempts to start it. Thing is, I've already made around 10-15 attempts at restarting - will have to jump start any further attempts - will try again tomorrow.

Mind you, I didn't run out of petrol, just got low, and when the light comes on there's usually 10-15 litres remaining on this particular model.

Reply to
Johnny

EFI systems continuously pump fuel round a loop at something like 40 psi. So as soon as the pump runs no airlocks.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

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