Cranks perfect first time or takes many attempts. Obvious problem?

[Alex Mc]

2.5L M20 1.3 Motronic 173 ECU

Basically, sometimes my car fires up beautifully. Other times it takes 3-4 cycles of the starter/ignition for it to finally catch. Just now, it took me almost 10 tries!

There is no correlation between how long it has been sitting or how hot or cold.

Once it fires though, it runs fine.

I'll dive into checking fuel, spark, etc this weekend, but I'm curious if this is an obvious sign of something typical. It's been 12 years since I've owned an M20 and am not sure where to start.

My thought is fuel pump?

Many thanks for all input. I did do a search of this forum but didn't turn anything up. If somebody is aware of a thread I can refer to, that's great.

[jeffnhiscars]

I just went through the same thing on my Zinno Cabrio. Start, slow start, start, no start, more no start then...

61 36 1 729 004 for $11.81

[Alex Mc]

Fuel Pump Relay?

[jeffnhiscars]

main relay. Invoice says:

"relay for Motronic"

[Earendil]

I had this 4 or 5 years ago and dealt with it for a year before I finally solved it. Ready? The Battery. My battery was failing in a manner that allowed the starter to turn the engine over, but the voltage wasn't high enough to (I guess) create or provide juice for a spark. The car would sound like it was starting to "catch" but would then fail and go back to cranking. My guess is that it was randomly dropping spark on a few plugs, and I needed 6 (or whatever) straight sparks to fire the engine up. Sometimes I got 6 straight sparks and it started on the first go. Sometimes it would need to turn over 4-7 times to get there. Once started, the car would run awesome and without any issue.

The battery checked out fine when the car was just sitting there (voltage wise) it was the drain it couldn't take. If you stuck a multi-meter on the battery while someone was cranking the car, the voltage would drop to something stupid like 8v or 9v.

I figured it out because it became worse in the Spokane winters. Popped a fresh battery in there and she started firing up on the first crank almost every time!

There are other things that can do it, but that was mine. Of note, my car is doing it again, but it's highly temp related and my battery is 6 months old.

[Alex Mc]

Battery is fresh, but I appreciate the input. I've ordered the relay and will report back with my findings.

[Alex Mc]

I received my replacement DME Relay from Pelican yesterday and threw it in the car. It started! Very sluggish from ice cold, may have had something to do with 35F and rainy, but it appears to be ok now.

I'm still going to check fuel pressure, O2 voltage and clean my ICV this weekend.