I probably should have used the word "cranks" rather than "turns over" - the idea being that there's definitely electricity in the system. I'd be really surprised if it was the spark plugs, I put in high quality new ones around 5k miles ago. I replaced the fuel filter around that time as well. The one time when it fired for a brief second before dying is what makes me think it's a fuel issue.
Well, that plus the odd "idle to off" behavior it exhibits sometimes when trying to start it under very specific circumstances (70+ degrees outside, very short trip (< 5-10 min), very short time off (also < 5-10 min) - this happens when going to grab lunch to eat at work, for example). It will start like normal, with initial RPMs about 1k above idle, but when it tries to go down to idle speed it instead falls all the way to nothing. Giving it enough gas to keep it at the higher RPMs immediately on startup, then slowly letting the RPMs drop to idle prevents that behavior - it really sounds like vapor lock, but this is a fuel-injected car. So I think there's something screwy with the fuel delivery system somewhere, and it finally got bad enough to keep the car from running. We'll see.
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Date: 2006-08-06 02:43 pm (UTC)Well, that plus the odd "idle to off" behavior it exhibits sometimes when trying to start it under very specific circumstances (70+ degrees outside, very short trip (< 5-10 min), very short time off (also < 5-10 min) - this happens when going to grab lunch to eat at work, for example). It will start like normal, with initial RPMs about 1k above idle, but when it tries to go down to idle speed it instead falls all the way to nothing. Giving it enough gas to keep it at the higher RPMs immediately on startup, then slowly letting the RPMs drop to idle prevents that behavior - it really sounds like vapor lock, but this is a fuel-injected car. So I think there's something screwy with the fuel delivery system somewhere, and it finally got bad enough to keep the car from running. We'll see.