POOR STARTING IN MORNING - IS THERE A DIFINITIVE ANSWER

Hi,

My story starts 2 months ago, a car that until then had never failed me with the first turn of the key in 10yrs.

Christmas eve 2011 last minute shopping, I got into the car, it did not start!

I tried several lengthy starts but nothing, by this time I could smell fuel so I deduced that I had flooded the car. I removed the plugs found that they were gapped at 80 thou and old so I replaced them, before starting I removed the fuel pump fuse and managed to get the car going. It was fine all day, stopping and starting no problem the engine never missed a beat.

The car was parked up for 4 days, I went to start it and again it would not start. I removed the fuel pump fuse and managed to start it on 4th try.

I mentioned this to a friend of mine who used to work for the AA and he said they are renowned for flooding and that he seemed to recall an issue with the engine temp sensor but could not remember for what engine variant.

I have never had an issue with flooding except when trying to start the car with this fault.

The engine temp sensor checks out ok as I removed it to do a resistance check (3500ohms at 5degC and 330ohms at 95degC). I also bought a new sensor to see if fault cleared and it remained so a bit of a bum stear. I put the sensor back in its bag and got a refund.

I found that if the car failed to start even with the above method, heating up the distributor and leads with a hair dryer ( possible damp issues - old school fix ) it would start so I went to my local Nissan dealer bought new leads, cap and rotor arm fitted these items only to find the car starting to miss fire after some swapping about it runs smoothly with new cap leads and original rotor arm.

The dealer parts are no longer the LUCAS parts that I removed the original rotor arm has insulation on the top and bottom of sweeper electrode where the new one does not! is this an issue?

The distributor is a 99B04 and have been told by the parts debt that this type of starting fault could mean a new distributor.

I do not now if I have cured the starting fault as all fitted today but if there is a specific fix I would be grateful as the threads I have been following seem to peter out with no conclusion.

If anyone has had similar issues with cap/rotor arm I would be interested in their comments.
 

frank

Club Member
the hairdryer was probably heating the cts russell, mine behaves far better in the morning now i have 2 cts,s wired in parallel
 
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