Car won't start in cold weather
 

I'm looking for some addtional input...

Lately, when I leave my car outside overnight (cold chicago winter) the car turns over quite easily but will not start. It's takes me 10-15 times laying on the starter to get it going and when it does actually catch, it runs rough for a minute, obviously not good for the starter.

My voltage in these cases has been a little low, and I have an 05 with the stock battery. I figured I just needed a battery replacement.

Today, my car still cranked over fine but it just wouldn't catch and I was putting a beating onto my starter (it was 9* F).

I decided to try jumping it off of a running car, my voltage on my turbo timer went up a volt or two and I figured this would solve my problem. Even with a good source of power I had the exact same problem.



-The car starts right up when in the garage, no problems
-Its not the battery, because I tried jumping it
-I was thinking it could be my voltage compensation table for my injectors (880cc) but, because I tried it when the car had 14 volts off of the car I was jumping it from, I doubt it could be this.
-The car has 50/50 water/coolant in it.


Any thoughts?

Thanks {thumbup} Justin

frozen line?

What line would freeze at 9* that would prevent the car from starting?

Gas definitely should not be even close to freezing or "gumming" up at this temperature.

i feel you on this one, even when my car is in the garage over night, with the cold ohio weather, i get it started, pull it out, then it dies, and until it fully warms up, sputters like crazy and runs like SH**. I think it has something to do with my super rich tune not mixing well with the cold.

Nothing in the car should actually freeze to cause it not to start. The freezing point of gasoline (consists of many hydrocarbons) is between -90*C and -200*C.

As the air gets cooler it becomes much more dense with oxygen. This will alter the properties of combustion. You could get a cold weather specific tune.

Hey Boltz,
Have you tried adjusting the "Cranking First Pulse" enrichment or the "Post Crank Enrich" in the ECU. On my car w/ 1150cc injectors I had to really richen up the cranking first pulse to get the car to turn over in this cold weather. I richened up all the positive temps in the tables until the car would fire up on the first crank. If the car is turning over and stumbling then you may want to try playing w/ the "Post Crank Enrich" tables.

Info. on tables if you haven't looked into them: https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/ec...ent-table.html

Do you have colder plugs in your car? My car wouldn't start last night after work. Exact same issue here in Chicago as well. I have one level colder plugs. I brought the stock ones to work with me, I am going to put those in and hope it solves it.

You need more fuel at cranking. Your injectors may not be tuned correctly. You may need more latency. Or you can try adding fuel for cranking like Creamo suggested.
Plugs don't matter. My car has 8 heat range plugs and starts on first crank at -10F. And that's on E85 and 1000 injex..

Probably unrelated but FWIW the starter on my 03 died on me on Sat. I would get an occassional grind when starting over the past several months but this weekend it literally just died. I got just a "click" and no turnover or anything at all. I swapped in a dif battery just to rule that out and no difference. I'm having the starter replaced as we speak...

I know this isn't your issue but my confidence in Evo starters (in general) is very low.

Messed with the cold start tuning parameters last night. Got it started but was running rich the whole way home. I need to play with it some more.

mine does the same thing!! going to look into this tonight.

After some more pondering, and some additional input, I've come to the conclusion that it is a bad IACV from running methanol. Meh. Not gonna pay an assload to fix it, so I will continue to try and work around the problem. Gonna try the Cranking first pulse deal to try and add a ton of fuel to compensate for what is probably a large leak in my IACV

I'd be curious as to your results. Re-read that thread that Creamo posted above.

I also have an 05 and live in Chicago and if I leave my car overnight on the coldest nights, I have a real hard time starting. A couple years ago, when we had that real cold spell, it just didn't want to start one morning. I had to lay on the starter for like 30 seconds and randomly puming the accelerator before the car barely caught.

I haven't had a no start problem since then (all the same parts and battery, etc), but I have been noticing that the car runs really rich right after starting the colder the temps are. Perhaps the 05 needs some of it's cold starting tables slightly adjusted and post running tables. I mentioned this towards the end of that thread.

Anyway, since I am garaged and work at home now, I don't get a chance to really test this, so I would be curious if you try some different settings. I posted the locations of the tables for your ROM (96940011) in that thread. I think I also found the post running tables, but am waiting for confirmation from better disassemblers.

Just to update the Chicago guys; I have been playing w/ the cold start enrichment the last couple weeks and was initially adding a ton of fuel to get the car started. I have since then gone the exact opposite route and practically halved all the stock values for "cranking enrich" or "post enrich" and that seems to be working even better than the rich settings.
I used the formula :
Scaled IPW Values=original IPW values*(513/current injector scaling). I posted a screen shot in the Cold Start Enrich Thread.