Spark, fuel, no start

Hi all,

My RRC 3.9 efi has been reluctant to start as the weather has got colder. Yesterday, refused to start all together. I have spark and fuel so am a bit lost. The rotor cap was looking a bit cruddy so haven't ruled that out but have cleaned in the meantime but as I say, I am getting spark. Using a tester, it perhaps isn't the strongest so have a replacement coil to put on as it looks fairly old.

Any ideas? Other than a reluctant start, ran pretty spot on otherwise...

Test you battery first you should be getting 12.6v

Battery is spot on. Turns over perfectly.

It needs to be a big, blue, fat spark, not yellow!

Take a gander at the ignition amp and pick up gap....also coil....

The spark needs to be big and juicy.

That's what I thought. Replaced the ignition amp very recently so would be annoyed if it's that!! You can't test them either? Annoyingly, no decent parts suppliers near me in Chelmsford so am forever waiting for post...

Go through the sparky side and replace cap/rotor arm/leads / caps and plugs. It’s cheap stuff. New coil coming good

they do deteriorate and the damp season will show up weakness.

as ^^^^^ needs to be big and blue. And oh blow your socks off if you test it wrong.

J

Will do and report back. Arghghg

Clean the end of the coil, dirt buildup & damp can allow the current that should go down the king lead to the dizzy cap to track & earth.
Don't use the cheapie pattern rotor arm with the metal strip riveted to the plastic.
Bear in mind you need to press down on the reluctor - 8 pointed star thing under the rotor arm - as you pull the rotor arm off or you risk dislocating the auto advance/retard mechanism in the lower part of the dizzy bowl. You can check that by turning the rotor arm with your fingers, When released it should return to its original position.
Leads are a service item.

I don't think I have looked at a distributor since I had a mk 2 Cavalier. Or maybe the mk2 Polo.

Ratae said:

Clean the end of the coil, dirt buildup & damp can allow the current that should go down the king lead to the dizzy cap to track & earth.
Don't use the cheapie pattern rotor arm with the metal strip riveted to the plastic.
Bear in mind you need to press down on the reluctor - 8 pointed star thing under the rotor arm - as you pull the rotor arm off or you risk dislocating the auto advance/retard mechanism in the lower part of the dizzy bowl. You can check that by turning the rotor arm with your fingers, When released it should return to its original position.
Leads are a service item.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice. Bought a Valeo coil and will get Lucas other bits. I'm going to the parents at the weekend and they live near Paddock spares so will get some stuff then. Was hoping to go in the RRC but suppose I'll have to go in the sensible and economical Golf...

Aye Up,

Is the non start issue occurring only when cold or at other times too?

I’d been keen to hear when you solve it as we have one ‘in the fleet’ which has had a persistent/intermittent non start issue for at least 12 months. We’ve changed/serviced both the fuel and ignition side to no avail.

One thing that I have noticed with my own - I cleaned the stepper motor back in August (it was really carbon-ed up)
and it started on the key, ran at a 1000rpm for about 10 - 15 secs then dropped down to 6/700. (Normal)

Just recently (since temps have dropped?) on starting it takes slightly longer to fire then it flicks up to 1000 rpm momentarily then drops to 6/700, sometimes stalling. I’m wondering could both our issues be a stepper motor or is there a temp sensor involved which doesn’t like the cold?

Efi experts on here?

A good way to track pun intended the HT side of things is to pop the bonnet open in the dark and get someone to spin her over,
Any tracking will be obvious,

It got steadily worse over about a fortnight either coincidentally as it got colder or because it got colder. I'm thinking the latter at this stage. I've very recently had my stepper motor off and was clean then but will check again. However, the stepper motor deals with cold idle. When I was diagnosing a previous fault, I did actually run without the stepper motor connected. Ran rough but did run. I will check it though because I suppose if it's stuck, it might not be allowing the correct starting environment...

And it's back to life! Coil, cap, leads and rotor. Did it all together which was a cardinal sin in identifying the problem but it cracked straight up.

JJKM said:

And it's back to life! Coil, cap, leads and rotor. Did it all together which was a cardinal sin in identifying the problem but it cracked straight up.

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Thanks for the update, pleased you got it going

I'm normally good at spotting things like this but it was surprising how quick it was affected. My old series would warn you for ages before it actually refused to go. In fact, I don't think it ever actually refused to!!

It’s like magic !!

JJKM said:

And it's back to life! Coil, cap, leads and rotor. Did it all together which was a cardinal sin in identifying the problem but it cracked straight up.

Click to expand...

You could always get adventurous and swap bits back one at a time for confirm the culprit ?? We gots to know !!

pwood999 said:

You could always get adventurous and swap bits back one at a time for confirm the culprit ?? We gots to know !!

Click to expand...

Yeah, start with the cheapest !