Delayed Cranking

Bumper. seeking answer as well for my car

 

Are you guys hitting the starter with car in gear?

Thats OK but it takes a couple of seconds for the system to put the trans in neutral.

If that is not it you should check voltage to the white solenoid wire at the starter when you start to crank the motor. It could have a voltage drop.

 

Has your F1 pump stopped priming when you're trying to turn it? If my F1 pump is still running the car won't turn over until it's near done cycling.

 

As Rifledriver said - is your transmission in gear when you start the engine? If it is then there will be about a 2 second delay as the F1 transmission puts it in neutral before engine start.

 

There will be a starter cranking delay as the car puts the transmission in neutral from first gear, but there is also a delay if the pump is slow to build pressure. It also depends on the programming of the TCU. The 360CS TCU looks for a higher system pressure than the regular 360 TCU before will allow the starter motor to crank.

We had a 360 in the shop that had a marginal F1 pump along with other F1 problems. When we replaced the standard 360 TCU with a 360 CS TCU there was a noticeable increase in delay time before the starter was allowed to crank from a cold start after sitting for a long time. Switching back to the regular TCU eliminated the delay.

So you can either leave the car in neutral when you shut the car off or turn the ignition switch to position 2 and wait some moments for the F1 pump to build sufficient pressure before attempting to crank the engine.

 

thank you all for your reply.

let me describe the symptom a little further.

the car was in neutral, everything seems fine. Battery is new. I was starting the car in a very quiet place, so quiet that i can hear throttle valve open and close if I step on gas when engine is off. As a result I can hear the f1 pump primes and stops.

after I wait for "check ok" to disappear, i turn the key, I hear the starter motor to kick the flywheel for 1 click and stops there. after sometimes 2 seconds, sometimes 5 seconds, sometimes more, sometimes forever, it cranks and the car fires up.

It is as if the current wasn't enough to turn the crank and the current builds up when I was holding the key in there.

this only happens 1/3 of the times. Maybe less.

I checked the cable around the starter area and its fine.

 

If the cables and connections are good, you should check the voltage going to the solenoid and the starter motor. You can get access behind the driver's seat (left-hand drive).

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Put one voltmeter on the red wire and another voltmeter on the white wire. The red wire goes to the motor starter and the white wire goes to the solenoid.

The white solenoid wire is the middle pin on the white connector.

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The red wire should always be at battery voltage and the white wire should have no voltage. When you turn the key to the start position, there should immediately be battery voltage on the white wire. The red wire should stay at battery voltage.

If you confirm that both the white and red wires are getting battery voltage but the starter is not turning over, your solenoid is probably going bad and you will have to have rebuild or replace it.

 

I have an F40 here that was doing exactly as you described. It had a bad starter relay. Not all the cars have relays and I am not in front of a 360 diagram to know if it does or not.

 

I always check at the consumer, no exceptions. Testing upstream is not testing the entire circuit. You need to know what voltage the starter is getting, not some other point in the harness.

 

For a DIY troubleshooter, it's a question of whether to invest in the effort of taking the car apart to do it the "right way" vs. the likelihood of success doing something simpler to start with.

Of course it's best to check at the device itself, but the starter is not easily accessible for that type of a voltage measurement, especially without a lift, and especially if the problem is intermittent. Checking the connections behind the seat is a reasonable first step in identifying any potential logic circuitry problems, including any issues with the start relay.

If the voltages check out OK behind the seat but the car still won't crank, the only other possibility would be the wire run to the starter, or the starter itself. At that point, there would be no choice but to remove the bottom covers to get direct access to the starter.

 

You can diagnose or waste time......Your choice.

 

There are two starter relays in one of the relay boxes behind the left seat. One relay keeps the engine from cranking when the factory battery charger is connected to the car, the other gets its coil grounded by the TCU when it decides that it is ok to crank the engine.

If you look a the photo that ruby posted of the positive cable junction box, you can see a white four pin connector just to the right of it. There are only two wires that go into the top of the connector: a red/green wire and a grey/white wire. The grey/white wire comes from the TCU, and grounds the starter relay during cranking.
You can measure the voltage at this wire while you are cranking the engine. It should start at battery voltage and then drop to .5v or so during cranking, indicating that it is being grounded.

It the relay is grounded during cranking but the starter doesn't crank, it is time to check for power at the white output terminal of this relay, the white wire at the starter solenoid terminal as well at battery power and ground at the starter motor.

 

Excellent tips. That’s the type of a diagnostic approach I prefer in situations like this.

In the 360, cranking issues can be caused by problems in any of the following areas:

1. Battery
2. Ground
3. Cut-off switch
4. Start switch
5. Immobilizer circuit
6. Brake circuit
7. F1 circuit
8. Battery charger circuit
9. Start relay
10. Solenoid/starter motor

Since each one of these circuits has a number of associated connectors, there are probably a couple of dozen potential failure points before we get to the actual starter itself. Checking the voltages behind the seat is an easy way of reducing this complexity by dividing the system into two more manageable chunks – upstream and downstream.

This approach is particularly useful if the cranking problem is intermittent. Instead of having to lift the car to remove the bottom trays for a troubleshooting session, a voltmeter connected to the diagnostic points behind the seat can simply be placed on the passenger seat. The driver can then monitor the voltages during normal use until the problem is encountered.

Once the upstream circuitry is eliminated as a potential cause, the focus can shift to the engine bay for an examination of the starter.

A professional garage with full resources may prefer to immediately lift the car and drop the trays to get access, but for the typical DIY’er it’s way more practical to troubleshoot the upstream circuitry first.

 

The immobilizer circuit has no effect on the cranking/starter operation of a 360. The car will crank just fine when the alarm/immobilzer is enabled, it will just not start.

The only portion of the brake circuit that has an effect on starting is the brake light switch, and this only comes into play if you are trying to start the car when it is in gear. If the car is in gear and it doesn't see the brake light switch input, then it will not shift into neutral and crank. If the car is in neutral, then it will crank with no brake light switch input.

 

That depends on the model year. I have a '99 US version 360 manual and it will definitely not crank unless the immobilizer is disabled.

 

It's not a matter of model year, it's a matter of F1 vs Manual.
F1 can crank with immobilizer engaged, manual can not.

 

I have documented and photographed for the 360 IMMO delete thread, the exact pin out of the (common failure point) Mechanical Relay which is soldered onto the Immobilizer box circuit board which is used to prevent cranking.

@eric : I don't know about it being exclusively f1 vs h-gate thing since I've seen the issue of non cranking without the bypass of the relay on a CS and that is an F1 based car. My manual required the bypass to crank too.

On many of the 360's I've seen the immobilizer prevents cranking on one of the 4 mechanical relay (within the Immobilizer box behind the seats) which can be bypassed to enable Manual cars to crank even if they don't send the correct entitlement to start message to the ignition ECU's.

It is only 2 pins you need to join so very easy to bypass and if you want to disable the Ignition ecu my Swiss Army Knife tool (paid version) can be used to temporarily disable the immobilizer (so the ignition ecu's ignore it) which is very useful to eliminate it entirely from the fault finding exercise, particularly when you suspect it is the cause of the intermittent problem.

 

Trev, I have redraw the starter circuit electrical diagram from the WSM.
It shows that on F1 cars, the starter relay is grounded by the TCU while on manual cars it is grounded in the immobilizer. I found no link at all between the starter circuit and the immo for F1s.
The WSM may not be exact but it is consistent with how my 360F1 was happily cranking even with the immo enabled.

 

Thanks for the posting.

I'll have to check the wiring diagrams for the CS F1 too (which I have got full schematics for) but I definitely saw it was required to bypass the relay (in exactly the same way as how I did it for my H-gate) on a USA spec model otherwise it simply wouldn't even try to crank.

 

That will be interesting. Thanks.

 

Could be, there are some conflicting reports on this issue in previous fchat threads.

But assuming you are correct, that would mean that about a third of all 360s will not crank with the immobilizer enabled, which confirms the immobilizer as being one of the candidates for causing cranking problems.

 

So I seperate the white connector, obviously the car won't start.
But I hear a distinct solenoid opening sound. What is that solenoid? Is it the starter solenoid??

 

Hi Trev.
Have you been able to check whether the starter circuit of CS and 360 F1 is going through the alarm ECU or not ?

 

On the 360 cars I've seen the cranking was inhibited by the larger immobilizer unit, pins 12 and 13 (white and black, as documented on my immobilizer delete thread) are joined under relay control. If these pins are not joined the car cannot start even if the immobilizer within the ecu is eliminated entirely in software and reflashed. You get no cranking. As soon as you join those pins together you can remove all of the immobilizer boxes out of the car (with immobilizer delete patch applied) and the car can start without any immobilizer involved at all.