As it says, my car is giving me bad times when cold starting. I've put the TPS, idle, and timing all at Mazda spec, and even cleaned the spark plugs, but i have to wait for it to hit ~800rpm (while running rough) before i can apply any throttle. After a second at most, it will run smoothly like nothing happened and will fast idle just fine at 1500rpm. About half the time blue/white smoke will dump out the exhaust after it catches and will sometimes continue with a light amount of white smoke until i start driving it, but it smells accrid and not sweet so i don't think it's coolant.

This has been an ongoing problem for the past week or so and it's been bugging the hell outta me since the only thing i can think of is that i may have not gotten the intake pipe on fully (looks like it is, though) or it's running too rich (adjusting idle fuel doesn't affect idle quality or where it's idling at, so i put it back to where the flat of the screw is facing the back of the arrow to L).

The first picture are the plugs from my front rotor (Leading, Trailing) and the second picture is of the plugs from the rear rotor (Leading, Trailing). Didn't take a picture before i put them back in, but they're much cleaner after going over them with the wire brush. They're also less than 1,000 miles old.

 

you probably have leaky injectors.. have them cleanded or replaced

 

Just got back from checking the intake piping from the AFM to the TB and while it looked alright, i went ahead and took it all apart and made sure.

As to the leaky injectors, i would send them off to have them cleaned as a precaution, but this is my DD right now.

At this point i'm thinking of snagging an MSD 6A or Jacobs Power FC 1000 and hoping that the better spark from that will solve my problems, but i almost feel as if that's just a bandaid.

 

Make sure the water thermo sensor is connected on the back of the water pump housing. IF it is disconnected, it defaults the ECU to a temp of 176 degrees which in turn causes hard starts when the engine is actually cold, not 176 degrees. Once the engine is hot the starts should be normal.

 

if it was leaky injectors I would think he'd have more of a hot start problem. Really sounds like you're running rich/ flooding which could be injectors but how are the hot starts doing? Try wiring a fuel pump cut off switch and use that when starting it.

 

I rarely run the car to full temp, shut it off for a few min, then start it back up, so if that's the kind of hard starting you're asking about then i'll do just that in the morning. Otherwise the starting is almost as bad after an hour~2hours of sitting, but not as bad as it had been when sitting over night (i'll know if it's still that bad in the morning, since i did clean the plugs today).

Today was the first time i redlined it twice since i replaced the radiator cap the other day, and shortly after the add coolant light lit up. With the overflow still full a few hours later, i'm beginning to wish for divine intervention.

 

Ok, it still started rough this morning, but it didn't sputter a few times before kicking up to an appropriate speed where me messing with the throttle would be able to help it. I drove it until it was warmed up and idling at 750~, shut it off for ~2-3min, and started it back up with a little less problem than it had cold starting this morning.

As before it runs smooth with an occasional pop from exhaust light off, but which has been something that's happened since i bought the car.