New to the site and hoping to get help on my 1989 Accord. I have couple of problems that maybe related.

After the car has warmed up I have noticed a hesitation when first taking off.

After driving and up to operating temp. and car sits awhile. It has a hard time starting. It would crank over and attempt to start. The way I get it to go is I sit there and either I pump on the accelerator or hold it down. Most of the time I can get it to start. If not I wait until the engine cools down then it would fire right over.

I have changed the fuel filter, plugs, wires,cap, rotorand 1 injector. I changed the head about 30 thousand miles back and ran well up to this point. Car has 17900 miles.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Is this a carbuerated or fuel-injected engine. I think they had both in 1989.

Put your car description in your signature line.

good luck

 

Sorry,It is PGM-FI 2.0 Fuel injection.

Thanks

 

Sounds like a warm start flood situation.

HOT & WARM STARTS;
I would suggest that you turn on the key and wait 2-3 seconds [CEL shuts off].
Full fuel pressure for the best injector spray.

Then hold the gas pedal 1/2 way to allow more air, [pumping does nothing in a fuel injected engine] crank for 15 seconds.

If the engine fails to start hold the gas pedal all the way down, the TPS will read WOT and the fuel injectors will shut off. This allows full amount of air into the cylindersand clears the flooded condition.

 

Thanks for ther suggestion. Do you think a weak fuel pump? Any ideas what would be causing the problem so I can change out?

Runs great once the car is moving, has slight hesitation when you first start off.

 

Any ideas on what would cause these problems?

Thanks

 

Fuel pump could be problem. When you turn keyswitch to ON, listen for the pump to run for a few secs and cut off. If that happens pump is OK. If silence, then could be main fuel relay or intermittent fuel pump.

I had a fuel pump that would intermittently fail to start-up. However, by hammering w/ repeated key switch movements from OFF to ON, you could get the fuel pump to finally "kick over" and engine would start.

I would suggest trying to figure out why extra fuel is flooding engine when you have a warm stop. It could be a leaking fuel injector. After 15 minutes, check fuel pressure at fuel rail by cracking banjo bolt or pressure test access port. If you get no fuel spray, the fuel pressure has been lost. This would suggest either leaking fuel injector or leaking fuel pressure regulator(FPR).

Aruptured FPRdiaphragm could also cause leak-down. Pull the vaccum line to FPR and see if you smell gas. If yes, the diaphragm has ruptured and might cause the flooding by allowing fuel pressure to bleed into vacuum reference line.

good luck

 

on a few occasions i have found a bad TW sensor ,, telling ecu that engine is totally cold thus ecu richens the mixture , thus car has a hard time starting ( floods)

 

Just wanted to add that the next time this problem occurs, it would be a good idea to do one thing that will narrow this down a bit.

Pull a spark plug, leave it connected to the wire, ground it up against the engine block and have someone crank the engine over.

Got spark or not? If no spark, post back and let us know, that's a whole different diagnostic path.

Also, after removing the spark plug, look at it. Is it wet/black and smells strongly of fuel, which would indicate a flood condition, probably a FP regulator not holding when warm or leaky injectors?

One more thing to consider (I think someone mentioned this earlier) would be the coolant temperature sensors. When cold (low coolant temp) the ECU commands a richer mixture to aid in cold starts. If they are reading cold all the time, when trying to start the warm engine it will overfuel, causing a flood/no start.If this is the case, a visual inspection of the plugs as above will show the flooding (wet plug, strong gas smell.)

Keep us posted.

 

Thanks Adam and all the folks that has responded to my problem. I've been out of town and have not had a chance to look at any of these advises. I will post as soon as I run these checks when I return next week.

Thanks Again,
Rick