So it happens about every morning whenever I would try and leave for work. I'll try and start my car (2005 Evo 8) turn the key and the car will just crank and crank, what feels like forever. I'll shut it off and try it again, just keeps to crank and not actually start up. After about 4 or 5 tries of doing this my car will finally fire up and run. I'm just wondering if anyone else has had this issue or not? I'm leaning towards maybe it's the spark plugs? It just recently started doing this probably a month or so ago. Thanks for any help!

 

My guess is that your fuel pump isn't starting up early enough. What fuel mods do you have?

 

This is also on E85, I should have probably mentioned that as well. But stock fuel rail, 1200CC injectors, Walbro 255 pump. And I'm assuming all stock fuel lines

 

Next time starting cold, have someone crank your engine and you put your hand over exhaust pipe. Smell your hand to see if thwre is fuel odor. If you do, then it's another problem.

 

Will do. Thank you very much!

So theoretically speaking, say it does smell like fuel what kind of issue is that?

 

I am thinking it would mean that the injectors are shooting in fuel but you aren't getting spark to start the car. If then try new plugs if its still not firing up then see if you are getting power to your coils?

 

If you are getting fuel, it is possible it is flooded with fuel from a leaky injector or 2. And that can foul your spark plugs.

With clogged and leaky injectors, you may need to go through enough cycles to wet cylinders enough to start and idle engine. Get back to us with results and others will chime in with more help

 

When and if you ever upgrade your fuel pump, you can install a wire to watch your voltage. I did it for my car and it is a real eye opener to show me when fuel pump is running and at which volt. On mine, I noticed that when hot engine, it sometimes start with fuel pump stuck at 14V. I had to manually force the relays to go into 8V at idle until ECU fuel pump relay #3 actually switches on.

 

Awesome! Thanks for the tips guys! Unfortunately I'm away from my car at the moment and won't be back with it for another month and a half. But I'll definitely try these things out whenever I make it back!

 

BTW, you should avoid letting your car sit over 2 weeks on E85. It is rumored to clog your injectors with gunk and corrode your head (this happened to me, but I can't say 100% that it was from E85 since it just happened to leak compression on intake valve 1 year after switching to E85 and my injectors didn't have visible gunk although 2 were clogged and leaking).
When you get back, go ahead and change your plugs and pay attention to how long you can drive before this problem comes back. Also, since you don't drive your car much, if this is happening in the winter (cold weather) with summer blend E85 in your tank, then it's normal. E85 doesn't start well in cold weather and you should be on 93 or at least the winter blend (E70?). Only use E85 in summer when it isn't a problem.

 

I've had multiple cars sit for months with E85, it's never been an issue..

 

Sorry / a bit OT
Don

Did you ever get a chance to review RL E85 review after 3 straight years?
https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/e8...years-e85.html

 

All I know is what happened to my car. Bought in 2006 new. Stayed mostly stock until May/June 2017 where it was upgraded and tuned for E85. February 2018 is when my intake valve seat started leaking. My best guess is E85 pooled on back side of intake valve where it eventually leaked. I also had pitting on multiple valve seat/lower runners. Maybe my local E85 station sells dirty fuel or my fuel upgrades/install were not very cleanly installed where crap entered fuel system and dissolved and started building up at injector nozzles...I don't know. All i know is this happened to me and I'm doing all I can to prevent from happening again (including doing every install going forward myself). Although I can do my own installs, new gaskets and machine work still adds up.

 

It's interesting how random cars have build up while many others don't. Maybe E85 dissolved my 91 build up from 2006 (+11 years worth) and the first fillups caused most of my problems.

 

I've heard about the scares and myths if you will with E85 sitting in your tank for too long. I had just recently read a post on here where a guy had left a full tank of E85 for somewhere near 6 years and it didn't do anything to his stuff thankfully. So that lifted a huge weight off of my chest whenever I had left my car 3 weeks ago