Hello all !
I have an FDS3 which has been running fine for the last year or so. I started to get high engine tempratures so at the advice of Clive, changed the rad for a Koyo as there were no leaks on the system so put down to a fuzzed up rad.
At the same time, i had the fuel filter and plugs changed all round, again, supplied by Clive and fitted by my mechanic.
Car ran sweet although on a couple of occasions the coolant alarm went off, it looked like it was losing water but i have since topped up and all seemed fine, car ran without the alarm buzzing in my ear !
I went to check the coolant again as i was a bit worried that i may still have a leak, coolant appears to be full to the brim, i also replaced the filler cap as i dropped that into the engine (i have since recovered it), filler cap supplied by Clive, i mention his name as he knows way more about these cars than i and would always supply the right part, fired up the car, left it running for a minute or so and then shut it down and left it overnight.
I didn\'t move the car without a filler cap in place.
Came out the next morning and found some tosser had hit it again leaving me a nice crack in the front end which i have just had re-done for the same reason and again, surprise surprise, no note to say sorry, here\'s my insurance details etc...
Went to fire up the car, turns over but won\'t start and the coolant light and annoying alarm comes on again, kept turning it over till i ran the battery down which didn\'t take very long, not impressed, bought jump leads, tried to jump start, no joy, turns over but won\'t start.
It almost starts and then dies much like it is flooded...
I have tried starting it with the clutch down in first with full throttle pressed to try and clear any flooding but doesn\'t seem to make a difference.
Called the AA, they checked that the plugs had voltage on them which they did, they also messed about with the fuel pump relay and checked some fuses but no joy, still won\'t start.
The plugs i had fitted were FD-IG001-NGK BUR 9EQ SPARK PLUGS (http://www.mazdarotaryparts.com/bfd-ig001-ngk-bur-9eq-spark-plugsb-781-p.asp)and as i said, when it came out of the garage it was fine, ran like a dream.
It has been a bit cold here but it has started fine from cold before, has never let me down.
I have noticed that when i have stopped turning it over there is a residual white smoke creeping out of the exhaust, it has always smoked white a little when starting up but then clears once the auto choke thing dies down and the RPM\'s idle down to about 1000....
Any ideas or thoughts would be greatly appreciated as i will now have to drive a 1.4 fiesta till it\'s fixed !
Cheers
Mark
Sounds like the battery is dead and the consequent turning over has flooded the car. The cold weather kills batteries for fun.
Stick the battery on charge and then when charged press the accelerator fully down and turn over, do it for about 10secs and then turn off, turn over same way a couple of times. Then try and start it. Should splutter into life !
Shaun
the battery is deffo dead, have been trying to jumps start it off a fiesta. Tried the accelarator down trick too but no joy. Maybe there isn\'t enough juice in the battery or the plugs are soaking wet now too. I\'ll pull the battery and charge it tonight, don\'t fancy trying to get the plugs out unless I really have to. Don\'t have a garage or drive so will have to be done on the street.
I would say it\'s flooded, and can\'t start to poor battery. Early in my ownership I had the same thing. Couldn\'t start my flooded car. Mind you, that time i did manage to start it off a jump. But if the battery is fubar then I would look into buying a brand spanking new one.
had exactly the same thing and cleared it up today.
pulled all the plugs yesterday and blocked the holes. cleaned the plugs with a little WD40 and scratched off any crap then left them overnight in in the boiler cupboard. stuck them back in this morning and jump started it from my Astra no problem!
i also squirted oil into the plug holes and gave the engine a hand crank before blocking up the holes overnight.
how difficult did you find getting the plugs out, have yet to try this one on my own!
it\'s a pain in the arse, but if i can do it any diy mechanic can!
jack the car up and get under the passenger side. you should be able to get to the plugs from there. i just used a small ratchet spanner with a swivel socket extension and a 14mm plug socket.
it\'s more awkward than difficult, as it\'s so tight under there. i had more trouble plugging the holes (bits of clean, non-fluffy rag) than getting the spark plugs in and out.
wicked, well, if it doesn\'t start after the battery charge then that is what i\'ll have to do, thing is, i\'m no mechanic so the only jack i own is the one that came with it and my collection of tools are not worth writing about !
Fingers crossed for the battery !
it\'s quite a fiddly job and you need to spend a bit of time under there, so there\'s no way i\'d do it without a pair of axle stands at least. i\'d never trust the little Mazda jack!
I flooded mine a while back and was told to put a bit of enging in the plenum, remove the black flexi hose on the left hand side of the plenum and pour in a bit of engine oil, will smoke like hell when started but did the trick for me.
Nick
Hmm, gonna try the battery first i think !
Whne you say remove the black hose on the side of the plenum, ss that the little black hose that goes onto the standard ABV ?
I whipped that out and replaced it with a bailey dump valve so i now have a blue pipe going to the side of the plenum, it\'s a bloody small hole to get some oil into though !
I\'m at work at the moment and can\'t picture what hoses go to the plenum off the top of my head, all i can remember is there\'s an intake elbow on the right which you can take off to get to the "bloody hard to get to" spark plugs !
As for jack stands, true true, supplied jack is good enough for changing a wheel but not for working under the car, will be giving the missues dad a call again to see if i can borrow some jack stands and a decent jack, borrowed a battery charger off him last night !
Hopefully a fully charged battery will do the trick :-)
it\'s about 14/15mm pipe on the left of the plenum which goes over to the servo I think.
Nick
OK, so, i called the friendly AA people again as they have more tools than i have !
Pulled the plugs, made sure they were clean, cranked over with the EGI fuse out to clear any residual fuel.
Only seems to be the top two that are getting wet according to the AA guy.
Also had the battery hooked up to the AA guys truck to charge.
Heated up the plugs and injected a little oil into where the plugs go, refitted plugs, cranked over, then put the EGI back in, splutter but no firing.
Car still won\'t budge.
Am concerned that A: it won\'t start and B: the coolant alarm keeps coming on everytime when blatantly there is coolant aplenty, it\'s full to the brim.
Have also noticed where we have been trying to turn it over that fuel is dripping out from somewhere, AA guy said that is probably fuel coming back up from the exhaust and out of the cat ?
There was no sign of fuel leakage on Saturday when i tried to get it going...
Maybe also i have fuel leak but if that was the case then i think there would have been way more fuel on the floor considering how much i have been trying to get it started...
So the car has now been left still not working and with all plugs and leads back in....
If i carry on trying to fire it up i\'m going to burn out the starter motor.
With the constant coolant alarm buzzing and after reading through a few threads, maybe the ECU is gone ?
Could i have blown it trying to jump start ?
Anyways, i\'m at a bit of a loss now, anybody live near Brixton that knows a thing or two about these crazy cars that could give me a hand ?
I make great tea and am willing to supply food and possibly cash !
Basically, HELP !
STILL NO JOY !
I have deflooded the enging countless times, AA have been out three times, i\'ve towed the ******* thing round the block ten times and still no go....
Anybody got a can of petrol i can pour over the bloody thing as i feel like setting fire to it....
I was going to say bump start it but sounds like you\'ve already tried it. There must be something more than just flooded if it wont even bump start.
Have you checked that you\'re getting spark, fuel and compression correctly?
i\'m not sure about mechanics in the SE London area, but if you can get a tow down to north Kent you\'ve got Shy Auto and Rotaryart. Either of those guys should be more than able to find the problem.
I have mailed Clive as I think I have got to the point now where I need some proper help. All the symptoms point to flooding but I\'ve tried everything you can try to get a flooded car going and still no joy.
let us know the out come with this mate good look,
I will do, all i want for christmas is a working FD, doubt santa will get that down the chimney, but if he turns up with some tools he can crack on !
sounds like Water seals in the engine matey, it will never start if there is water in the housings
I don\'t think it\'s that as i know what i did before hand would have caused it to flood which is why i am convinved it flooded, start from cold for about 30 seconds and then shut of the engine, deffo flooded me thinks...
Bloody hope it\'s not water in the seals, that\'s a rebuild isn\'t it ?
If there is definitely coolant in the filler neck, then likely is that the problem lies in the wiring and not low coolant. All the coolant alarm is is a circuit that is earthed using the coolant - so if the circuit is split at any point, you will get the alarm regardless of whether there is coolant or not.
A common problem with freshly installed engines is the coolant circuit wiring behind the power steering pump not being put back together. There\'s 4 electrical plugs: 2 for the coolant, and 2 for the air con. These can easily get muddled up, or even missed. Check those.
I had the same problem with mine. Coolant buzzer kept going off due to the air pockets being created from air getting into the coolant system. After that i got the constant flooding problem to the point where i had to keep tow starting the car to get it going. Finally when the car was running it would run like a dream for about 70-80 miles and proceed to dump all its coolant out of the overflow tank. This was obviously due to the air from the engine pressurising the coolant system and of course the non starting was due to the water/coolant getting into the engine.
In short it was my water seals which are soon to be replaced hopefully just after the new year. If you need more advice on the problem or on getting a rebuild done gimme a call on 07792716026 or email me at anthony@rotarysolutions.co.uk (anthony@rotarysolutions.co.uk)
Nice one, Clive is coming to have look at the car on Thursday which is very nice of him, if he can\'t get it going, nobody can !
I\'ve had a look at the temp sensor and from the filler cap to the conenctor at the end of the wire all looks good, however, where this connects to a cable that dissappears off into the engine somewhere, the connector has loads of corrosion on it so i\'m thinking that maybe it\'s not connecting there properly, when Clive comes over on Thursday i\'m going to bridge that connection and see if it stops the annoying alarming, it did do it before but then settled down....
Nikp, i doubt very much it is a plug mix up as these haven\'t been touched since i bought the car, i\'ve not had a new engine unless someone popped one in without me noticing so i think that the problem is going to lie with either a dodgy connection or the waterseals, boo.....
Fingers crossed for you matey. :)
when my last one flodded due to the PFC dying the only way i was able to get it restarted was removing the fuel pump relay then towing it and bump starting it at 50mph !!!
Scary yes but it worked, it took a damn long time to get it to start running properly after that though!
I deflooded it every other way you could think of but in the end bumping it from that speed was the only thing that worked. It wouldnt even bump from 30mph or 40mph
Sounds very like its flooded big time as mine was mate.
As for the buzzer, there is a SINGLE wire that runs down where the spark plugs are for that buzzer sensor, the previous owner of mine managed to damage it when changing the plugs and thats why it was coming on, I had a nightmare of a job trying to reconnect it down in that space!
Deffo worth checking that its still intact especially as you say its had the plugs done etc as this is when you normally catch the wire and pull it from its connector !
why are these cars flooding, really not looking forward to this happening to often on mine
!!!
it can be a number fo reasons mate, cold weather, crap plugs, fuel map too rich, cold start issues.
its just one of these things, my new one done it the other day but I was lucky and managed to catch it before it completely flooded!
Flooding happens with the RX8 too, it\'s generally cost of too much fuel stopping the spark. It has also happened on the Porsche Boxster too!
Have you put the egi fuse back in after deflood?
Tips for not getting into this situation for this who are worried.
1. Try to make sure engine is warm before shutting down.
2. When shutting down,hold accelerator pedal down to keep the revs up at around 3000 to 4000 rpm,then at the exact same moment you turn off the ignition put your foot fully down on the accelerator pedal,and hold it down till the engine stops turning.(Dont forget turbo timers!)
What does that do you might ask?
Well when the ignition is shut off both fuel and spark stop,but if you are at the higher rpm and then put your foot to floor it makes sure that the engine internals are dry from fuel with plenty of air going into the engine.
You should never flood it again if you get into the habit of following these two simple steps all the time.
I have pasted this in the technical thread area too.
Regards
Carl
thats a really good Idea Carl, makes sense. Ill try that from now on I think, although its only happened once with my own car but id rather not have it happen again! LOL
Cars with pretty fresh engines are also probably less likely to flood. I can start mine and switch off imediately and it\'ll re-start easily the next time. So it\'s also probably a sign of wear and tear too.
IT\'S ALIVE !!!
Clive very kindly came over and and got it going for me, was severely flooded from all my hapless attempts plus the local agent the AA sent had snapped one of my spark plugs and put it back together using insulation tape !
Thankfully Clive had a spare but i deffo now need to get a new spark plug and a battery as mine is on it\'s way out.
I also managed to bend the front strut bar trying to tow start it so i\'m on the lookout for one of them, will post in the parts wanted section !
Still can\'t get that bloody buzzer to shut up, think the sensor or the wiring is trashed as there is plenty of coolant in there, anybody know if there is a fuse i can pull to shut it up, driving me insane !
Failing that i think i\'ll have to seek out the buzzer and cut it till i can get a new sensor.
I now also have a nasty burning electrical smell, i think one of the fans has burnt out as i can see one going round and not the other, might have seized from standing and the cold weather, fix one thing and there\'s always another !
Anyways, at least it runs!
Thanks to everyone for all your advice and especially Clive for coming over to help me, a legend and bloody nice bloke too !
On closer inspection i think it\'s the battery that stinks !
nice 1 good news!
If the level sensor works the same way as the FB one then you should just need to ground the wire to turn it off.
Shaun
Strangely the coolant level sensor isn\'t going off anymore, i would love to say it was becasue of some ingenious thing that i did but alas it was not, i prodded the connector a bit and that seems to have resolved it, for now anyway !