Amur_

Up until Friday morning my FC's engine has been running perfectly. But let's step back to Thursday night.

I changed the oil, wire-brushed the plugs, cleaned and greased some ground points and then sprayed down the accelerator and surrounding linkages (in front of the plenum) while turning/cycling them (something that I'm pretty sure I've never stopped to do b4.) I didn't touch anything else under the hood until I got home.
After I'd parked, and was letting her idle for a moment, I noticed that the idle was sitting at 1500. Normally it's at 900-1000. Strange. So I grabbed a screwdriver and brought the idle down to 1000. Everything seemed fine and good so I shut her down for the night.

Friday morning was a beautiful, sunny day. I used my remote starter from my apartment (like I do every day) to let her warm up. When I get down to the car, she's off. 'OK, must've taken me longer than 15 mins to get down here since I started her.' So I hit the remote again as I'm walking over...
She turns over, there's some sputtering, she catches and runs very rough for less than 5 secs, and then she quits.

I just about sh*t my pants on the spot.

So this is how she's been starting, when she's cold, since Friday: She turns over and over, then she starts to sputter, then there's usually a backfire, then she catches, and then I've got to hit the gas to bring her up to 4000+ rpm or she'll die. It takes 3 or 4 tries before I can 'catch and hold' the engine @ 4000rpm and not lose her. When I do finally catch her, I have to keep her at or above 4000. If I start to ease off within a min. or so, she sputters and struggles until I bring her back up again.

Once that minute has gone by, she's fine. And she drives fine after that, too. Idle's fine. Power's good. And starting her when she's warm has been a non-issue. It's getting her started and getting her through that first minute that's giving me heart attacks.

I'm wondering if maybe by oiling and moving all those linkages I loosened one up that had seized or otherwise been stuck in place. Now that's it's free, maybe it's no longer sitting where it was. And maybe this is screwing up the start-up (if everything else was calibrated against where this mystic linkage used to be...)
I'm not smelling gas during start-ups, and the exhaust looks and smells normal. In fact, it's more like the car isn't getting *enough* gas during start-up.

B4 anyone asks, the plug wires are new aftermarket ones from this past fall, and I was very careful to put the plugs and wires back in their correct places, doing just one at a time.
ttyl,
Amur_

Amur_

Well, thanks for not all jumping in at once and turning this into a Hell Thread. ;D

And we found the problem.

Y'know how the nut on the backside of the alternator has that steel bracket piece? I guess it's there to hold a nearby wire bundle. I was tightening belts on the night in question and must have cranked the alternator's bolt w/o putting a wrench to that nut. The bracket must have come around cracked the Water Thermo Sensor. Almost took it right off.
So each time I went to start the car, it wasn't getting a signal from the WTS, and so it went into a 'limp' mode. Hot Start configuration. It's February in Canada right now, so that pretty much screwed me.

$10 for a used WTS and everything's back to normal.

And I cut off that bracket with a grinder. No point in letting me shoot myself in the foot the same way twice.

ttyl,
Amur_