Help with Heat soak/Hot Start

[JDL5.0]

Sorry for the long delay, life happened. Here's an update and its not really better. I replaced the hot wire going directly to the starter to match everything else, I replaced the ground as well and rechecked, cleaned, etc... I also went ahead and changed the starter to a Powermaster Master Torque starter which in the description promises to start a 14;1 compression engine on a hot day after hot passes and so on. I went into the tune and lowered any timing setting that deals with starting, locked the timing and confirmed the static timing was still good and I haven't really noticed any difference. The frustrating part is that it doesn't do it every single time. Here is a real world example of what happened. My brain always goes to the worse case scenario so hopefully you all know something I am missing. My son was gonna go to a friends Bday party cook out. Car was sitting all day on about a 85 to 90 degree day in the sun. Battery was showing full charge, when he went to crank it, it did the hard start thing again. which is is turn over normal and then all of a sudden it will do a hard start thing for about two cylinders and the fires right up. He let it warm up, drove over to the gas station, left it running while he filled up, went to leave and it accidently stalled it and it fired right up with no issues. Made it to his destination and shut it off. Guys at th party wanted to look at the car so he cranked it up and again it cranked with no issues. Couple hours later he was ready to leave and again no issues. Made it home and shut it off and for kicks started to crank it back up and it did the hard start thing again! What now.......If I wasn't already bald I would pull my hair out.

 

[from6to8]

Sorry for the long delay, life happened. Here's an update and its not really better. I replaced the hot wire going directly to the starter to match everything else, I replaced the ground as well and rechecked, cleaned, etc... I also went ahead and changed the starter to a Powermaster Master Torque starter which in the description promises to start a 14;1 compression engine on a hot day after hot passes and so on. I went into the tune and lowered any timing setting that deals with starting, locked the timing and confirmed the static timing was still good and I haven't really noticed any difference. The frustrating part is that it doesn't do it every single time. Here is a real world example of what happened. My brain always goes to the worse case scenario so hopefully you all know something I am missing. My son was gonna go to a friends Bday party cook out. Car was sitting all day on about a 85 to 90 degree day in the sun. Battery was showing full charge, when he went to crank it, it did the hard start thing again. which is is turn over normal and then all of a sudden it will do a hard start thing for about two cylinders and the fires right up. He let it warm up, drove over to the gas station, left it running while he filled up, went to leave and it accidently stalled it and it fired right up with no issues. Made it to his destination and shut it off. Guys at th party wanted to look at the car so he cranked it up and again it cranked with no issues. Couple hours later he was ready to leave and again no issues. Made it home and shut it off and for kicks started to crank it back up and it did the hard start thing again! What now.......If I wasn't already bald I would pull my hair out.

wow man that is crazy and I tell ya these things can drive ya crazy.

One day I played around with mine and noticed it would only want to attempt to try and shut off if I let off the clutch too slow and not give it enough fuel right away as crazy as that sounds lol. A lot of times depending on spacing of the parking lot, ect I like to manipulate the clutch to gas pedal because of course you can't just let off the clutch super fast so has to be a happy medium and sometimes that's enough to cause an issue. The other crazy thing is it doesn't do that during days where it is not extremely hot and humid, only on those type of days so I'd really like to know what the root root cause is.

Does yours do this no matter what time of year it is?

 

[JDL5.0]

It did not do any of this until this summer. It had an issue where it loped really hard (not in a cool way) when it was cold so I sat down and went through every chart, graph, setting etc... untill I figured it out and now during the winter it would crank like a normal summer day. Summer actually arrives and now I have the hot start issue and since I just messed with the tune I kept thinking I screwed something up. I did have some timing to high but I lowered all that now and still have the issue so I am confused. At least it does start now but its obviously not right. Tuning is so picky I could have a fuel/timing setting wrong by just a little and it is causing this issue.

 

[from6to8]

It did not do any of this until this summer. It had an issue where it loped really hard (not in a cool way) when it was cold so I sat down and went through every chart, graph, setting etc... untill I figured it out and now during the winter it would crank like a normal summer day. Summer actually arrives and now I have the hot start issue and since I just messed with the tune I kept thinking I screwed something up. I did have some timing to high but I lowered all that now and still have the issue so I am confused. At least it does start now but its obviously not right. Tuning is so picky I could have a fuel/timing setting wrong by just a little and it is causing this issue.

ohh wow man I can see your frustration then. I always went to a dyno tuner 2 hrs away but thought about doing/learning the self tuning avenue and under stand why some guys would want to do it themselves. But all in all just those little cases such as yours man I would've probably given up and taken it to someone anyway lol so that's probably enough for me to not mess with trying it myself. But don't give up man and one thing about me though contrary to what I just said, I don't like to give up on anything so keep fighting as long as you can though i'm sure it's frustrating as heck.....

Just that when it comes to those little intricate things with cars and electronics specifically, someone else can have that lol. I'll tinker and try some as long as I have the patience.....

 

[JDL5.0]

Finding a good tuner is hard by itself. There is a lot of tuners who can make you go fast down the track BUT when it comes to smooth daily driven tunes, a lot of them pass. I'll keep digging at it.

 

[from6to8]

Finding a good tuner is hard by itself. There is a lot of tuners who can make you go fast down the track BUT when it comes to smooth daily driven tunes, a lot of them pass. I'll keep digging at it.

gotcha gotcha and defintely a reason to be concerned with having someone do it then; unless they are close enough to take it back and forth for corrections and such lol....

 

[AeroCoupe]

Have you hit up a91what on here? He is the thread starter on the 2nd and 3rd sticky in this forum. He remote tunes and is really good tuner and willing to help from what I have read on here.

 

[JDL5.0]

Have you hit up a91what on here? He is the thread starter on the 2nd and 3rd sticky in this forum. He remote tunes and is really good tuner and willing to help from what I have read on here.

No I haven't but I will soon as I can. A friend of mine is gonna help me out to make sure I haven't missed something obvious when I get to feeling better. I blew out my back and am having trouble getting around at the moment so once I am back up to shape I will get back on this.Thanks for the advice.

 

[JDL5.0]

Small update. We have gone through everything again including sending the Msquirt computer back to have it checked out. They said it is fine of course, they were real nice and didn't charge me anything so I can't complain but I think I was secretly hoping they would say , "yep there's your problem". A new problem that has come up is that all of a sudden the afr gauge is not syncing with the lap top gauge until it wants to? Followed all the directions, made sure gauge was grounded to the same spot as the computer etc... and no change. Weird part is I think the computer gauge is actually the wrong one. While idling the computer shows WAY rich but the dash cluster gauge shows normal AND the car doesn't run like its rich so there's that.... We went ahead and went to the track this week end so my son can get more practice and maybe secretly hoping we would just beat the car back into it's senses and the car for the most part did great. If you shut it off and tried cranking it right back up, that was almost a no start but if you let it sit 10 to 15 mins it would crank right up every time. I think I am going to remove the factory MAT sensor and put it into the intake pipe so it get colder air quicker and isn't cooking in the lower intake (factory spot). After all this frustration, seeing the ear to ear smile on my son's face because he pulled the front tire on his launches makes it all worth while. End of the day the old water pump (I don't know how old it is) started to weep so we called it a day for safety.

 

[JDL5.0]

WE FOUND IT!! After the races last October we pulled it in the garage and proceeded to pull it apart for a list of minor issues that needed addressed including the hot start issue. In the process of changing water pump and timing cover for leaks we went ahead and changed the cam to something different we wanted. Glad we did because we found rocker arms that were another mile or two from falling apart. One of the rollers was half off already . As Murphy law goes, we would fix one thing which led to more issues, added the fact of getting faulty parts (parts were warranted and replaced, just frustrating fixing same issue twice when new parts break). Checked, cleaned, and or replaced any wire or wire connection that may have looked questionable. Finally was able to crank this thing and yes it sounds amazing! While in the garage I bet it idled for 2.5 hrs while we corrected a lot of stuff in the tune (mostly fuel from the new cam). In that time we had it warm enough it started the hot start crap again which was beyond frustrating since we just put so much time and energy in trying to fix this issue. We adjusted and adjusted to no avail when by accident we shut it off to look for more stuff in the tune when we realized this whole time of tuning it was running which following the foot ball in the tune had us looking in the wrong spot. When the engine was off, and in cranking the football went to a part of the fuel chart we "thought" was "out of range". Realizing this it was dumping a LOT of fuel while cranking and basically hydro-locking the motor with fuel. So we pulled a lot of fuel out in that area and BINGO it fired right up! After all the high fives and fist bumps were done we massaged the fuel table to get it just right and proceeded to crank the car several more times just to make sure and it fired up every time. We then went for a long drive to smooth out some other areas in the fuel and timing tables, also had to change the decel fuel cut as well but at the end of the day this car is finally running like a factory car.......with lots of power! So after lots of idling and about an hour drive time I can finally say this car has ZERO leaks, cranks, runs, and drives like it is supposed to, even with a big cam!

Now we need the track to open up so we can dial in this clutchtamer and we are dialed!

 

[from6to8]

WE FOUND IT!! After the races last October we pulled it in the garage and proceeded to pull it apart for a list of minor issues that needed addressed including the hot start issue. In the process of changing water pump and timing cover for leaks we went ahead and changed the cam to something different we wanted. Glad we did because we found rocker arms that were another mile or two from falling apart. One of the rollers was half off already . As Murphy law goes, we would fix one thing which led to more issues, added the fact of getting faulty parts (parts were warranted and replaced, just frustrating fixing same issue twice when new parts break). Checked, cleaned, and or replaced any wire or wire connection that may have looked questionable. Finally was able to crank this thing and yes it sounds amazing! While in the garage I bet it idled for 2.5 hrs while we corrected a lot of stuff in the tune (mostly fuel from the new cam). In that time we had it warm enough it started the hot start crap again which was beyond frustrating since we just put so much time and energy in trying to fix this issue. We adjusted and adjusted to no avail when by accident we shut it off to look for more stuff in the tune when we realized this whole time of tuning it was running which following the foot ball in the tune had us looking in the wrong spot. When the engine was off, and in cranking the football went to a part of the fuel chart we "thought" was "out of range". Realizing this it was dumping a LOT of fuel while cranking and basically hydro-locking the motor with fuel. So we pulled a lot of fuel out in that area and BINGO it fired right up! After all the high fives and fist bumps were done we massaged the fuel table to get it just right and proceeded to crank the car several more times just to make sure and it fired up every time. We then went for a long drive to smooth out some other areas in the fuel and timing tables, also had to change the decel fuel cut as well but at the end of the day this car is finally running like a factory car.......with lots of power! So after lots of idling and about an hour drive time I can finally say this car has ZERO leaks, cranks, runs, and drives like it is supposed to, even with a big cam!

Now we need the track to open up so we can dial in this clutchtamer and we are dialed!

Amazing man it feels great when finally comes together and you work out the little PITA things that have been bugging ya for quite some time. I was actually just telling a buddy recently about my AC journey with my 94 and not only saving $850 dollars labor for a shop saying it had to be the evaporator that would've ended up not fixing my problem anyway, but when I did find the source of the leak and fixed it near the end of summer, the entire winter and even spring I wanted to turn on the AC so bad and see if it was still had freon and working fine but I was like nope I'll wait til the first hot day. When we got that first hot day that required AC and I turned it on, when I felt that ice cold AC man ole man I had a big and patted myself on the back for my first time charging up the system myself and solving the source of the leak mightI add after a lot of diagnosing and checking stuff with dye in the system and all.....

Now as to my issue that I've shared with you which is similiar to what you had going on with the " Only on hot days " what it would do, I hope my issue is resolved as well when and again when it gets hot and I am driving the car, I will see. What I did do recently though was I was curious to see rather another tune after going to LT's from shorties, free flowing pypes bomb catback vs flowmasters, and 3.55 to 3.73's (different rear end), I was curious to see if any changes would help. At first inquiring and reading up on most if not all saying I would not need a new tune I was hesitant but got curious as time went on since I put the engine in in 2021 from the wrecked car; as time did go on it felt I was missing something on the bottom end. Well after pulling some fuel as well when I took the car to him it immediately felt more responsive right out of the gate and I definitely noticed a change for the better. I will see on the first extremely hot day here if that other issue is resolved as well.......