Tried searching this forum, but I can't. I had a hard start this morning w/ our 2002 Max SE. All we did yesterday was back the car out of the garage to sweep, and pull it back in.
Also, it was cold and rainy yesterday. I had to crank the car continuously to finally get it to kick over. Dealer says it was due to unburnt gas in the cylinders and that it happens occasionally. Anyone else experience this? I thought I remember reading about this a while back. If someone can point me to the thread or let me know of their experience and cause, it would greatly be appreciated. Thanks!

 

I was hoping someone could shed some light on this....

 

SAme thing happened to me last week, I was also very low on gas at the time so that might have something to do with it in my situation.

 

I had just filled up the day before. I was thinking bad gas, but the car ran great the rest of the day, with no problem starting. Wish I could do a search. I know it has been discussed here before....

 

In my experience with FI vehicles this problem is often caused when you start a cold engine, run it for only a moment, and then shut it off. When you then re-start it, the computer still is in "cold start" mode and dumps too much fuel, flooding the engine. The early FI RX-7s were notorious for this problem, along with a few other "easy flooding" FI engines (Jeep 4.0Ls this problem is very easy to duplicate, if you want to **** off a Jeep owner, do this to him -- start engine, run for about 3 seconds, turn off...watch the unsuspecting rookie technician crank it for 20 minutes!)

If it happens again press the gas to the floor and crank the engine over -- on most FI cars this will send a signal to disable injector pulsing, allowing the extra gas to clear out. Not sure about VQ35's with DBW throttles (never had the cold start flood problem on one) but maybe it's similar or just as effective.


There are other causes to this, I think. Maybe also the PCM just got momentarily scrambled, the IAT sensor frizzed out, the throttle blade stuck shut, the IAC or TPS "froze" for a sec (do VQ35's have either one?)