Hard starting

[MhicBrydes]

Hello all, new poster here. I bought my 1990 festiva EFI from the original owner who recently passed last year. It has been a great little car and only has 115k on it. He was a mechanic at a ford dealership and kept this little beast in immaculate condition. And this beauty spent up until last year as a garage queen. When I got the car I also got the factory repair manuals. I searched through them and could not find this particular issue. This car has run great up until recently when this hard start problem has been showing up. The car will fire up and die immediately. This will repeat 2 to 5 times before it stays running. After it stays running it will continue to run like a top. It does this somewhat randomly with little change due to outside temperature. I am an Audi/VW mechanic and when those cars act like this it is usually a fuel pump. So, I replaced the pump and filter. That only helped for a week or so. After joining here I did use the search button and cleaned the VAF flap and checked the wires on the connector for cracks or breaks. Everything cleaned up nicely and the wires were still pliable and no cracks. I also made sure the top of the air box was tight and the intake piping was tight all around I did do a tune up with new plugs, wires, rotor and cap, and new air filter when I got the car. I am not sure where to go at this point and all of your help is much appreciated. Sorry for the long post.

-Brandon

[ryanprins13]

Welcome! Long posts are great, it sucks to have to play 20 questions to be able to answer someone.
Still have a question for you though- since this started happening what is the longest drive you have done? Has it had any issues with shutting off for like 1/10 second and coming back on while your driving once its warm?
Only 2 things i could think of at the moment, one -inside the distributor is basically your cam sensor which doubles as the crank sensor. That sensor failure causes your issue in other vehicles but i havent heard of it in festivas. The warm issue is another distributor failure.
Second would be a small vaccum leak, but that would make it idle high and run lean which you woukd probably notice.
Third would be idle air control valve failure. Search it on the forum here.

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[WmWatt]

On my carburetted model it's usually the choke. Don't know if fuel injected cars have chokes.

[MhicBrydes]

The longest is about 30 miles. I haven't noticed it cutting out at all once warm. After it gets over its starting issue it runs just as fantastically as always. I will bring some staring fluid home to check for vacuum leaks but didn't hear any vacuum leaks. I will look into the air control valve. Thanks for the quick response.

[WmWatt]

Another thing which comes into play once the engine warms up a bit is the computer timing based on sensors like the oxygen sensor. Perhaps there's a problem with the base timing while the engine is cold and running rich?

[MhicBrydes]

Sorry for the delay in replying with an outcome. Cleaning the idle air intake seems to have fixed the hard starting problem. My wife has driven it for about a month now after cleaning it out, and the car fires right up everytime now. Thanks all for the help.

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