Can't get car to start!

If you've honest-to-God got both fuel and spark, then your fuel itself or A/F ratio is awful...but a more likely answer is that you don't actually have a spark.

 

crank or cam sensor ? bad maf?

 

Please explain how you know you have spark and fuel? Also, what exact service did you do to the car after is was running fine?

 

If it's a KE-Jet TR (either F113A040 or F113B engine family), you could lose +12V power in the injection system and it would not start even though you might pass tests that seem to show both spark and pressurized fuel are "present" (although the right amount of fuel is not actually delivered because without the +12V power there is no current flowing in the EM valves on the Fuel Distributors).

What is your engine family number (top of cyl #6)?

If you do have a KE-Jet system, this recent thread:

http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=69889

describes how to confirm/deny if +12V is reaching the injection system by measuring at the "red wire" on the water thermal switch during starter motor cranking, and, if missing, how to troubleshoot the fused protection relay C in the triangular black box.

Good luck -- give a shout if you need further assistance in this area.

 

Gasoline burns. If you've got anywhere near the right mixture of fuel...and a decent spark...then you've got combustion.

You don't have combustion.

So you could have bad gas (some people have filled up with water due to gas station mixups). It happens.

You could have a bad mixture (e.g. no air, massive amounts of fuel, etc.).

You could have a bad spark (e.g. gap too wide for your mixture...but not too wide to spark out in the open air when a spark plug is removed to view spark). Or your spark plugs could somehow be grounding via the engine...so you see a spark out in the open air when you remove a plug, but you aren't getting a spark due to grounding when you re-insert the spark plug back into your engine.

 

Well, as a dinosaur shade tree mechanic, all I can say is if you have fuel and spark, which you say you do, you must not have timing. I'd check the componets that set your timing; any chance you were at BDC and not TDC? I did that once and it took me forever to realize my silly mistake; I was using he wrong end of the engine for the #1 spark plug! (I used the cam position as viewed through the oil cap to get TDC) It wouldn't even sputter being 180 degrees out.

Ken

 

I've tried the "thumb on the spark plug hole" while you rotate the rear tire, to feel the whoosh from the compression stroke, but that's one of the ways I got 180 degrees off. Your luck may be better? BTW, you time off of #7? Oh yes; you have twin ignition. What's the odds BOTH are 180 degrees out? Actually, if someone screwed up one bank, maybe chances are they made the same mistake twice...?


These cars are far more complex than mine, but I still say if you have spark and gas, and timing, the car MUST run! You are lacking one of the 3....

Ken

 

I don't know your car, I've just got a 348...but my 348 just needs a spark gap of 0.028 inches...which is somewhere around .6 to .7mm.

By any chance did you gap in inches instead of mm?!

 

You say the fuel is the same as when you stripped down. Fuel goes off you know? ... drain it off (and keep it just incase) then try with fresh fuel.

I have never had this issue with an injection car but with a motorbike (carbs) the fuel will go off after a month or so.

 

hello,

MAF is mass air flow sensor. i do not know if your TR has one but it could be the problem.

 

When you say you checked for spark, did you just check for spark by holding the plug wire next to a ground and then cranking, or did you have a spark plug attached to the wire and grounded against the block, THEN cranked over and actually observed spark across the plug electrodes?

I ask because if your plugs are wet (per post #7), they could be "wet-fouled" and not firing.

Personally, I would pull out all of the plugs and crank the engine over a few times to blow out any raw fuel in the cylinders, then install new plugs. Don't just clean the old ones unless you KNOW they are OK (can you install one into your lawn mower to see if it will fire?). I've seen many instances of wet-fouled plugs keeping the engine from firing. If you have been squirting raw fuel into the cylinders while doing pressure tests, it MAY have fouled the plugs.

 

On the KE-Jet systems, the EM valve and the movement of the airflow metering plate both control the resulting fuel pressure at the injectors (which determines the flow). When the manual mixture screw is/was tweaked, there was the default amount of current flowing in the EM valve. If you lose the +12V electrical power so that there is no current in the EM valve, the system goes very lean. One TR FChatter had a case where he'd lost the +12V power in the injection system, and for the "fix", someone had tweaked the manual mixture screw to compensate so it worked like a simple non-lambda K-Jet as you described (i.e., only the deflection of the airflow metering plate controlling the amount of fuel delivered) -- worked OKish when running warm, but all of the cold-running features were not working (because the EM valve was dead). Not saying this is your problem yet, but definitely confirm this +12V power is present BEFORE making any tweaks to the manual mixture screw(s).

Is the chamfer you're referring to this one on page D34 in the TR WSM? Why did you need to remove the airflow metering plate?
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

I checked the KE-Jet booklet (95990856) that came out with the ~'87 F113B TRs in Europe and there's no mention of that chamfer on the airflow metering plate and the only figure shows the plate edge as simply square.

Might be that only K-Jet without lambda F113A TRs have that chamfer on the airflow metering plate (since it only appears in the early part of Section D). Just a guess -- and I'm not talking mine apart to see what I have

 

But, you were wrong. You said above that you had gapped your plugs to between .06 and .07.

But, you already said that your plugs are "wet" so you can't really be interested in checking to see if fuel is coming in...you already know.

So...are you just putting us on here?! Is it April Fools Day somewhere??

 

I can't say on the KE, but (FWIW), one experience I had with the K-lambda was after a round of system pressure checks. I removed the CIS pressure meter, pushed down on the AFM plate to get the pump running, assured I had fuel (rather than air) in the lines, and cranked: nada, nil, nyeta.

Then I remembered what CIS stood for: continuous injection system.

All that testing had pumped way too much fuel into the intakes.

I suppose the quick answer would have been to pull the fuel pump fuse and crank to clear the intakes. But as the cranking had lugged the battery, I just put the charger on it for a few hours, and left it for the next weekend. After sitting a week, vroom.

 

Sorry if my earlier question seemed harsh in some way -- I didn't intend it to be. I just want to be clear on your situation and removing the airflow metering plate would usually be done as part of a more major repair that would invalidate all prior mechanical adjustments. I'm clear on your status now, and getting a little extra "experience" is something that we've all done -- no biggie

You're correct that you don't have a "frequency valve", or so other gizmo, that would make noise when in operation, but you still have what is generally referred to overall as a "Lambda"-type Bosch CIS system (i.e., when warm, under moderate cruise or idle conditions, the system runs closed-loop using the O2 sensor output as the feedback signal). The EM valve on a KE-Jet TR fuel distributor is a silent device that "flexes" a moving part internally (when the current passing thru it is changed) to change the amount of fuel delivered at the injectors.

No "limp home" mode that I'm aware of on any version TR. On the "KE with Lambda" TRs, it either runs open-loop (where the current in the EM valve is set to a "dumb" value based on temperature and time since start-up) or closed-loop (where the current in the EM valve is actively varied by the injection ECU in order to get a desired output from the O2 sensor). If you unplug the O2 sensor (or the signal from the O2 sensor is determined by the injection ECU to be obviously wacky), the system for that bank will only run in the open-loop way.

For your reference, attached is the figure and text I mentioned from that F113B KE-Jet booklet. Keep chewing -- let us know what you find.
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

My understanding of CIS you can have only a few problems:

fuel pump not working can you hear it?
lack of fuel pressure even if you have some gas come out. did you pressure guage it?
cold start valve flooding engine. did you confirm CSV working?
sensor plate or control piston not moving. Did you check the control piston movement?
massive air intake leak. Bellows off/cracked?
your timing is way off if you truely have functioning spark and fuel. Have you brough the car to TDC in compression and verify the rotor position to #1 . You modified something in the rotor from a previous post. Is this non-standard OEM?

Disable your fuel pump. Spray starter fluid in the intake for 3 seconds. Immediately crank the motor. If you have spark and timing the car will roar to life then die from no fuel. Then you know you have a fuel problem.

 

Dont for get the obvious fuel \ ignition test with good ole starting fluid in the air intake ... you spray in the intake for a few seconds, give it a crank and if you hear no detonation of any kind, start looking for electrical gremlins.

If you hear the engine fire up for a few seconds then die out, its then time to look into the fuel delivery troubleshooting.

this simple test will show you which direction you need to go in.