89 TII Cosmo, cranks but doesnt start!
 

1989 TII with Cosmo motor "13B - RE" decided to die at a stop light and not start again. The motor is getting plenty of spark, fuel and air but all it does is crank. White smokey/fog type stuff comes out of the exhaust after a minute or so of cranking. We already know that there is possibly low compression in the rear rotor but it doesnt seem to be enough to cause a problem. However it seems as if it isnt cranking over fast enough. The motor is not stock by any means by the way. Here is the list of Mods:

Stock 13B-RE jc cosmo motor
K2RD cosmo mounts
T04-hybrid turbo
Racing Beat downpipe, racing beat midpipe and custom 3" exhaust
K2RD Radiator
NPR Intercooler with custom 3" piping
FD water pump housing with GReddy underdrive pulley kit
Racing Beat oil cooler lines
HKS FCON
FD water pump
Racing Beat manual boost controller
Auto-power Roll bar (bolt in)
Recaro driver's seal with Sabelt 5-point harness
Brembo brake rotors with stainless steel lines and porterfield pads
Tokico Illumina shocks all around
Lightweight flywheel and a new ACT street/strip clutch w/new TO bearing and pilot bearing

Any help with this matter would be greatly appreciated. Thank you all,

Robert

push it and pop the clutch

LOL...if you want to volunteer to help push it fast enough...lol. We have tried that and we cant get the car rolling fast enough.

If you already know there's no compression, then why not just check it? Maybe its even a blown seal.

Check your timing, its probably off.

What standalone are you using to run the engine? I hope not stock TII ecu. recheck your settings if you're using a standalone.

+1 check the compression
+20,000 on popping the clutch, just get it to a hill and let gravity do the work!

Is it possibly just flooded?

It is a stock TII ECU. The timing may be off and it looks as though the Crank Positioning Sensor may be bad which we will try today.

It may actually be just too flooded. We pulled the leading plugs and the EGI fuse and cranked for a while and watched stuff come out of the holes for a while.

Things i would check based on your description to start out:

Fuel Pump operation (check for priming)
Engine Fuses
Starter Operation

We checked the fuses and they are all ok. The starter is something that will be difficult to get to considering we cant really move the car right now since it is stuck in the garage. The Fule pump is something that I am planning on checking today.

You can check out the car if you want to take a look at it. Here is the link:

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/775402

You need to get a standalone for that setup.

Here i'll help.

1. Check engine fuses visually and with ohmmeter
2. Check EGI Main Relay (driver side fender, closest to the firewall)
3. Check fuel pump connector behind driver side rear strut tower.
4. Check Fuel Pump

Easiest way to find out if the pump isnt working, pull off the supply from the fuel rail and crank, if fuel comes out fairly quick...like flowing water..then the pump is fine.

Spark
1. Check leading and trailing coil resistances via popping off the plastic cover and using an ohmmeter on the 2 bolts. Haynes manual says under 1 ohm is acceptable.
2. Check CAS resitances, unplug the CAS and check the resistance of the 2 left side sockets and the 2 right side and compare them to the manual.

Compression
1.Screw in a piston compression tester, hold the release valve and have someone crank the car and measure the bounces.

But, my gut says its timing related so you might wanna check the CAS first...make sure the dots line up under the CAS cover.

you definitely need a standalone, otherwise it's going to keep flooding....

The only issue is it isnt from flooding. The car ran fine before for well over a thousand miles especially when it drove home from NorCal. We changed the CAS and checked the fuel pump and everything is fine. It still just isnt starting. Its gets massive amounts of spark, fuel and air so I am just wondering what else it could be? We also changed the EGI main relay. As far as he dots under the CAS cover...there arent any. What now folks?

We dont have a Standalone but it is piggy backed with an F-CON to compensate for fuel issues.

We put a little bit of oil in the lower spark plug holes in hopes of bringing back some of the lost compression from the flooding. Lets hope that works. If not then I dont know what it is.

same thing somewhat happened to me and i poped it and drove around for a while never gave me trouble again

By the way guys, this is my car thats having problems >_< my friend thats been helping me has been the one posting thus far.

But...we almost got it started last night, we did the ATF trick, but with regular motor oil, i forget what weight we used, but it was some thick shit lol. It really wanted to go tho, it actually started for like a second but not all the way, and then died again. I still cant figure out if its electrical or compression. Even tho its not really an accurate reading, we did a compression test and it was reading out at about 80 in both housings, so with that, it shouldnt be compression, but if the oil thing helped, it makes me think it might be. The other thing is my buddy got shocked when he was getting out of the car, so it could be a bad ground some where.

The next thing im gunna try doing the oil trick again, but more than once, instead of trying to start it up after one try, i think ill do it 2 or 3 times before i actually try to start it again, just to make sure the apex seals are soaking up enough to regain some compression. If it still wont start, im just gunna have to start going through all the god damn wiring and see if theres a loose ground or something.

If thos two ideas dont work, i dont know what to do next, im really at my wits end with this damn car lol. We'll keep ya'll updated tho with what happens.

*bump*

The best way to get it to start will be to Tow start it... Strap the car to another one and pull start. Like this you will have enough speed, and can leave the car in gear to really get it going. This has usually worked when my car was very very very flooded. If this doesnt work, then you really do have something else going on.

At the moment we cant move the car from where it sits, so pop starting and tow starting are kinda out of the question. the car is in the garage and we built a storage rack above it, but couldnt afford to take the space to make it able to move in and out from under the rack = /

Any other ideas guys?

Update!

Well she fired up twice but only after we pulled the plugs yet again, turned it over and blew everything out of the housings & put 2 tablespoons of 5W-20 in each Housing in the leading holes. Personally I think that the either the Oil Pump is shot and not injecting any Oil or the Seals are just dry and havent pumped back up with Oil yet.

Any Ideas?

Also, There is Oil in the motor but no Oil pressure reading on the gauge and the Oil seems to smell of gasoline. Maybe it is just because we stink of Gas ourselves? I think that maybe the Oil has no pressure just because either the Oil pump is bad or it has just lost its viscosity. We are going to do a complete Oil change and try it again soon. If anyone has any ideas or further diagnostics now that this has happened please let us know.

Thanks,



-Jaysin

PS. Heres some videos of progress

<a href="http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v325/J-Arm/TII%20Start%20Videos/?action=view&current=MOV00103.flv">Without Oil in Housing</a>

<a href="http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v325/J-Arm/TII%20Start%20Videos/?action=view&current=MOV00106.flv">With Oil in Housing (Start up)</a>

<a href="http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v325/J-Arm/TII%20Start%20Videos/?action=view&current=MOV00107.flv">Turbo Spool and Oil Burn Off</a>

Sorry about the video links not working >_< i dont know how to do links like that without HTML.


Oh, and *bump* lol

gas smell in the oil is blowby or something i read, I don't think its good though when my car was running really bad the oil smelt horribly of gas.