Re: Starting blues..

[Shea & Brigitte Rutstein <rutstein@erols.com>]

Dr. Castillo wrote:

>I have a 5kw with 108K mi. Since the beginning of winter I have experienced
>starting problems. The car always start ,but not after several attempts.
>This is specially true when the car is cold. If I turn the starter with or
>without depressing the accelerator, the engine will start for about three
>seconds and then die. After that the engine will crank without starting.
>Probably after six or seven attempts the engine will start with ease.
>Someone had mentioned a bad cold start switch or perhaps a bad injector.
>This weekend I tied disconecting the electrical lead to the auxillary
>injector. This was the connector closest to the injector, but no luck. It
>didn't start. Is there someone out there with some idea on how to cure my
>starting blues.

I had the same problem a couple of weeks ago on my 86 5ks where the engine
would fire up for a couple of seconds and die out.  It turned out to be the
thermo-time switch, located at the back of the engine.  It controls how long
the cold start injector valve operates.  I took me a couple of hours to
trace it.  Bentley describes the procedure of pulling the wire off the cold
start injector and connecting a test light bulb (12v) across the terminals,
cranking the engine (remember to pull the center wire from the distributor
and ground it first), and timing how long the light is on.  According to the
temperature, the light should be on from 2 to 8 seconds (longer the lower
the temperature).  To check that it was the thermo time-switch, I
reconnected everything, pulled the connector on the switch and jumped the
terminals.  The engine started right up.  I didn't run it this way, though,
since I wasn't sure whether the extra gas would hurt everything.  I suppose
you could run it for about 8 seconds then pull the jumper while the engine
is running if you need to get to the shop.  I bought the switch for about
$65 at a local imported parts store (dealer wanted $85).  Just pull the
connector, unscrew, put in the new switch and reconnect and done.  Now
starts are easy.

Shea Rutstein