Strange fluttering at idle

[JohnnyP]

Hi everyone,

I haven\'t used my fc much in recent months and noticed the battery wasn\'t giving as much oomph as usual when starting and would take longer than normal to fire up. So yesterday I took the battery out and charged it up over night. I connected it back up this morning and turned the engine over. Great, started almost straight away. Got the usual oil smelling white smoke out the back and the idle settled to 1k rpm for 30 seconds or so. The engine note then changed to a strange fluttering sound, she started hunting a bit and then died. Now she won\'t start. I\'ve turned her over with the egi fuse out and then tried again with the fuse back in with no joy:3Confused

Any ideas what\'s up? All I\'ve done is disconnect and connect the battery.

The engine is a street ported single turbo (Tony\'s (antnicuk) old car). Car was running fine on wednesday, so it seems a bit odd.

Thanks,

John

[JohnnyP]

Have done some more searching and maybe it\'s my plugs. The noise it made at idle was a bit like if you blow out and make your lips vibrate! If you get my drift! I believe the plugs are only 2-3k mile old but I run premix so would that shorten their life?

[JohnnyP]

So I removed the old plugs, took out the egi fuse and connected one of those starter packs to my battery for extra power. I turned the engine over, which made a quick pulseing sound. Turned it over again. Third time there was a loud click and I lost all electrical power, no ignition lights, nothing. I removed the starter pack from the battery and the hazard warning lights came on! I managed to cancel this with the alarm remote fob. Electrical power returned. I replaced the plugs with new ones, put the egi fuse back and turned the engine over again. Engine turns over but doesn\'t start and now all lights on the dash and the pfc screen flick on and off when I try and start the engine.:confused:

I have owned the car about 4 months and never had trouble starting. I assumed I had flooded it but does any of this point to an electrical problem?

Thanks,

John

[rx jamie]

sounds about right. could be an earth problem

[JohnnyP]

So it was flooded after all!

Removed the plugs/egi last night. Cranked it until the battery died. Left the plugs out, recharged the battery and this morning she fired into life:Giggle What a relief!

Now on new plugs and she runs better than ever. :InLove

Does running premix foul the plugs quicker than normal?

[batman]

not sure about pre mix but you shouldnt crank the car for more than 11 secs at a time you ll burn out the starter

[BenLewisMav]

Also sounds like that fluttering noise you mentioned in the first place was just the idle control valve coming into play as the revs dropped.. You can hear mine come on and off really loudly as the Idle control valve is plumbed straight into the air filter. I\'ll post a vid if anyone wants to see.

[pdtaylor18]

glad you sorted it but dont even trust new plugs, been there myself and after another set of plugs it it fired. old ones were not even 1K old.

[BenLewisMav]

Yeah pete I had to buy two sets of new plug after I\'d only ran the car for about an hour on the first set and after that they were f00ked! what a waste of £40..

[pdtaylor18]

how do these plugs just give up so soon when a normal plug will do 30K and more before its time to throw it away.  NGK are a flipping good make, just dont understand the amount of failures due to the plugs.

[m1tch]

Perhaps check all the codes as well, in case there is something that is causing it to do that lol you might have a solution to fix the problem, but if you don\'t know what it is then it might come back again!

[BenLewisMav]

Well I think my problem might have had something to do with the Microtech base map (designed for my car with my mods by Microtech) being 33% too rich! with that fuel removed its a lot better. Don\'t really know how they went so wrong lol.