1990 Camry, 4 cyl. 2.0

Oct 05, 2007 7 Replies

So I posted a week ago about my Camry having starting and drivablity issues. I took her in and one guy said fuel pump and everyone else said no...either the pump works or it doesn't. I took her into a new guy and he sanned her (the other idiots who claimed fuel pump said they scanned her and claimed they got nothing) but my new guy got codes right off the bat. They were for the Mass Airflow Meter and the Throttle postion sensor. He replaced both and that seemed to fix the drivablity issue...meaning she doesn't just up and die while I'm driving her. But she is still not starting after one turn of the key. This morning it took four starts, and once I got her going I let her run a good 5 mins before I put her into gear and headed up the hill at the end of my street. Came to a stop sign. She shoook really hard and then...died. I started right back up and she drove like a dream. My guy checked the cold start injector...it was fine. Said the idle air control was good too...he wants me to bring her back in...any suggestions?



Intermittent electrical in the fuel pump circuit somewhere. Those other codes were probably red herrings; the on-board computer mis-diagnosing the problem. Have your mechanic hard-wire the fuel pump so it's always on when the key is on. If that works as a temporary fix, you can either leave it that way or get out the microscope and start taking the car apart to find the loose wire, cracked solder joint, corroded connection, etc.

the two parts he replaced were faulty. when he removed the MAF sesnor, the car idled like normal. When he put the new one on, code cleared. Same with TPS.

uh-huh. and your car is still experiencing the original fault, is it not?

Hard starting when the engine is cold but not when the engine has warmed up, with no other drivability issues is generally a symptom of a problem with the cold start enrichment system. Besides the cold start injector, there is a coolant temperature sender (I don't remember offhand whether your car has separate senders for the instrument gauge and one for the cold start circuit or if one sender serves both purposes). In some engines, there is a cold start injector timer and in others, the function is handled by the car's electronic control unit (ECU). A repair manual will tell whether there is one or two senders, and if there is a timer. The technician should check to see if the cold start injector is being energized while the engine is cranking, and if it is not, check the coolant temperature sender circuit and timer circuit, if there is one.

the reason why I took the car in is because the damn thing wouldn't stay on for longer than 5 mins. Kinda made driving to work a little hard.

He changed out the ECTsensor and it seems to be doiing fine. he is going to double check readings on everything. he did said the injector itself was working properly, which I took to mean it wasn't dirty or cracked....sooo...here's to hoping and I'll post when I get her back this week.

I get the impression that whoever is working on your car is just swapping parts in hopes of fixing the problem. a competent technician will check parts and associated wiring before condemning them.

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