Warm temperatures, high humidity, '89 won't start...

Yes. I think. I let the car sit for about an hour then started cranking with the gas pedal to the floor. I caught after about 10 seconds.

There's a temp sensor on the water outlet on the cylinder head that tells the ecm engine temperature. As they get old they error on the side of reporting too cold. then the ecm adjust the fuel rich for cold tempes. Result is flooding. They are cheap, under ten dollars and easy to replace.

Joe R.

Is the '89 a digifant? If so I came up with this trick when I used to flood mine almost daily because of oil leakage and plug fouling.

Rather than pull everything, Find the fuel rail, disconnect the wire going in (telling it to fire the fuel). Go back. Try to start. Usually the car will fire right up then die. Then I reconnect and go on my way.

The blue one (and black for that matter) is new within the last 2 months. Wiring is good as well. I think it was a freak flooding incident possibly related to the humidity or a flaky touch on the gas pedal (accelerator cable is new within the year :)

Just out of curiosity, there is a temp. sensor on the side of the head in a coolant flange. What's this one for? A/C?

It is a digifant.

The plugs were soaking wet but I'll keep this in mind. Much easier than pulling and drying everything! More exciting was this though: I pulled the wire from the coil to the cap and put a nail in the end of it. Pointed the nail at the block and left my other hand resting on the body of the car. ;) Needless to say my hand had a wonderful dull ache yet I feel refreshed. When I repeated the experiment without my grounding hand, I did not get blasted. The horror.

Thanks, Darryl.

It still does it from time to time (despite valve stem seals being fixed). Sometime I just hit it wrong and it floods. I've even considered wiring up a little switch on my dash to do it. The *worst* time to do it is on a hill steep enough to over come it being in reverse/first, when at the bottom of the hill is rush hour traffic. Parking brake is being "worked on." and it decides to do it.

My plugs tended to get soaking wet too. I even did the whole pull everything and clean it, turn it over to flush the cylinders. Then I figured... If it's flooded, why not just turn off the gas. The more it's flooded the longer it'll take. Usually it flushes enough gas out the back to get the mixture right to fire

Matt Anderson wrote in news:BC0545EA.3AFA% snipped-for-privacy@fwi.com:

on the Rover 200 you can do this from the comfort of your driving seat by knocking the fuel cut off switch and then bressing the reset button, or there is a seperate fuse for the Fuel pump which you can also pull.

There's also a fuel pressure regulator. I've never had mine fail but my dad had an Aerostar that also had such a device and it failed causing flooding when cold and poor mileage when warm because the car ran too rich.

Darryl wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

check your ground connections on the intake manifold good.if any have broken there's a pretty good chance you smoked your ecm.what you are describing sounds like it anyway.it blows a diode in the ecm & the injectors go to max duty cycle.

Grounds all good and the injectors are not 'stuck' open. I think it was just a fluke flooding. Although your post does remind me of the one computer that went bad and presented the symptoms you talk about!

Thanks for the reply, Darryl.

The '89 is notorious for grounding problems, and corroding connection problems. Either will cause the ECU to go into limp-home mode, which will not allow you to start. You can tell when this is an issue -- you either clamp the fuel hose, or (better yet) unplug the fuel pump and the thing will start, run and die.

You unplug the ECU, clean out all those contacts (both the little blades and the places where they go) and make sure all your ground points are very clean. That will certainly help.

Tim wohlford '89 Golf