oh hi..

[luckycowgirl]

it's me again..



my festy won't start..

i drove it to work this morning and everything was fine. at lunchtime i tried to leave and it wouldn't start.

my first thought (hoping lol) was maybe i had run out of fuel. sure enough, i was on E but not WAY below. i added a gallon or so of gas and nothing. tried spraying starter in the carb and nothing..

it sounds normal when it cranks over but it just doesn't start.

any ideas?

[anomoly40]

Check the VAF plug. It's on the pass. side right behind the headlight. Make sure it's plugged in good.

[91blufestiva]

^ It sounds like her car is carbed so she would not have a VAF.

Check the basics first, fuel and spark. Take your fuel line off and crank the car see if you are getting fuel, if you are, take a spark plug out, leave it plugged in and lay it against the engine hook on the head, and crank it over and see if you see spark between the spark plug and the hook. Hope this helps at all.

[Advancedynamix]

^ when doing this be very careful not to test the spark around any fuel that may have spilled, and test it away from any open spark plug holes. If the car is flooded, it can become a flame thrower in a hurry. This seems obvious, but I doubt I'm the only one here who has burned off eyebrows while checking spark (okay, maybe I am, but at least humor me guys).

[Movin]

Best way around to get rid of straggly eyebrows but later
when your girl asks "Whats that smell ?" lol change the
subject quick!!

[Bert]

Good advice from other posters. Check for spark and check for gas (ie is it flowing to the carb). Guaranteed one of these is amiss. There are inexpensive spark testers out there and the one I recently bought (plugs into the spark plug boot and then on to the plug itself) even tells you (via intensity of the light) whether the plug itself is lousy or even dead.
If you're tangling with this yourself you will be well on your way to becoming an automotive Sherlock Holmes. But it does become much more complicated. But no more difficulat than filling in a tax return.

[rbrown]

I just find an unsuspecting person to hold the wire. If they jump...

My guess though is it needs to pump up the fuel. It will take a few cranks of key to get the fuel back in the carb.

[Grey Vw]

I just find an unsuspecting person to hold the wire. If they jump...

My guess though is it needs to pump up the fuel. It will take a few cranks of key to get the fuel back in the carb.

It's not a fuel problem cause she sprayed in starter fluid.

[Advancedynamix]

I don't know if this will work on a carby car (I've never worked on a Carb festiva's wiring) but on my 93 auto I wasn't getting spark and I wiggled the fusible links around (wire looking things sticking out of a little plastic box on the drivers side shock tower, right and back from the battery) and the car started. I then pulled them out and cleaned around them and it has been fine since. Worth a shot.

[Movin]

^^^ now we are talking, where is festYboys diagnostic check list???

Bert could you expound a little about this in line tester?? It really sounds

simple and cool!

[Bert]

^^^ now we are talking, where is festYboys diagnostic check list???

Bert could you expound a little about this in line tester?? It really sounds

simple and cool!

Princess Auto (Winnipeg, Manitoba) carries them. I think Lisle USA makes them. $15 regular and 1/2 that on sale. There's a removable light bulb inside that is quite bright (as opposed to cheap testers) and can be seen in bright daylight even. Just a fluke that we discovered they also evaluate the condition of spark plugs. Bad plugs cause for a dim light and good plugs yield a bright light. Don't ask me why but it allowed us to resurrect 4 50 year old outboard engines in a couple of hours last week. My buddy ran right out to buy one for himself after. The small engines professor at the local college steered us students into investing in these things. I can take a picture if anyone's interested.

[Advancedynamix]

I think I know what he's talking about. It's kinda like a test light, but for ignition spark. Clear plastic tube with two contacts in it, one stationery and one you can slide to make the gap bigger, one end of it looks like the end of a spark plug and the other like a plug wire. You can watch the spark while the engine is running with the plugs all still in the holes. They have been around for a long long time. I used to use them to find fouled plugs on my snowmobiles. You can actually unfoul a plug that is starting to go buy opening up the gap to the max and winding the engine up (makes a hotter spark).



THis isn't like the one I had, but it's the same principle.

I had one like this, but it was just the thing on the bottom, didn't have all the disc things.

[drddan]

Check spark. The carb models have a module in the distributor that is prone to dieing.
If you dont have spark, can you borrow a known good disty from someone? Swap the disty and see if it starts.
Also, check for a broken timing belt, by removing the disty cap and seeing if the rotor spins while the engine is being cranked.
If not, you have a broken timing belt. Easy checks to see what may be wrong.

[Movin]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lisle-Spark-Tester-Spark-Plug-Wires-Coils-19380-/190405489665#vi-content

http://www.amazon.com/INLINE-IGNITION-SPARK-PLUG-TESTER/dp/B007TVRH04

Any of these??

[Advancedynamix]

I had one like that bottom one, but mine was adjustable. Not sure if that one is. It was over decade ago. It's probably still at my parents house in Maine.