Pre-cat hot starting woes
Discussion
I had this problem last year but it’s been absent the few times I’ve taken it out this year...
When hot the car won’t restart. The fuel pump primes, it cranks, but it won’t fire. It tries to, but never quite catches. After around 20minutes it’ll restart but then won’t idle so I have to jockey the throttle all the way home and avoid traffic lights!
From what I’ve researched, key things to note are that
It’s intermittent
The engine cranks
The alarm/immobiliser is a Meta unit fitted by HF a few years ago
The fuel pump primes
Once allowed to cool - without doing anything else - it will restart
Any ideas from the cognoscenti?
Thanks ??
When hot the car won’t restart. The fuel pump primes, it cranks, but it won’t fire. It tries to, but never quite catches. After around 20minutes it’ll restart but then won’t idle so I have to jockey the throttle all the way home and avoid traffic lights!
From what I’ve researched, key things to note are that
It’s intermittent
The engine cranks
The alarm/immobiliser is a Meta unit fitted by HF a few years ago
The fuel pump primes
Once allowed to cool - without doing anything else - it will restart
Any ideas from the cognoscenti?
Thanks ??
Edited by Greg M on Friday 31st July 21:17
I had a pre-cat 4.0 with similar issues. I found it would (usually) start hot if I held the throttle wide open while cranking it. Stank of fuel though. I had gone through everything on it except the fuel pressure regulator. Someone else had similar symptoms on here within the last year and I think they concluded it was the regulator. Can't be certain though. Errr sold mine since....never quite fixed it either....
You need to go back to basics when the fault occurs to help narrow it down.
Check for good spark at king lead and plug leads, try it first when the car is running ok to observe the kind of spark to expect.(need to be careful as this can hurt!)
A sniff of easy start may help with the fuel side just to see if it does fire.
Normally faults like this in my experience are electrical components that break down under heat such as coils, modules etc.
Rover gauge is worth investing £35 on to monitor the Fuel/coolant temp sensors to see if the temp feedback to ecu is correct.
Check for good spark at king lead and plug leads, try it first when the car is running ok to observe the kind of spark to expect.(need to be careful as this can hurt!)
A sniff of easy start may help with the fuel side just to see if it does fire.
Normally faults like this in my experience are electrical components that break down under heat such as coils, modules etc.
Rover gauge is worth investing £35 on to monitor the Fuel/coolant temp sensors to see if the temp feedback to ecu is correct.
Very similar fault fault I had a few years ago was that it would start to run badly and eventually stop when hot. Half an hour of cooling and it would start and run fine until hot again. It would often rev OK but not idle when hot.
Turned out to be the distributor cap. It was so old, the spring pushing the centre carbon contact has rusted away. So as the car got hot, the slight thermal expansion meant that the connection was extremely poor.
A new distributor cap sorted it. Some TVRs have some very old electrical components, especially if low mileage so other parts like the coil, rotor arm etc should be checked. Some replacement parts are also of a poor quality.
Turned out to be the distributor cap. It was so old, the spring pushing the centre carbon contact has rusted away. So as the car got hot, the slight thermal expansion meant that the connection was extremely poor.
A new distributor cap sorted it. Some TVRs have some very old electrical components, especially if low mileage so other parts like the coil, rotor arm etc should be checked. Some replacement parts are also of a poor quality.
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