CornerHard

Assuming the battery, starter power wire, and grounds are all good, is there anything I can do to make my EA81 crank over faster? Thx

Alright, after abandoning my Subie for a while to enjoy my other car, I'm back to trying to get it to start so I can go snowboarding. I got new plugs, a new battery, and did a compression test. The new plugs didn't do anything for me, though these ones stick into the cylinder a bit more, so maybe they will be better. The battery puts out the same readings at the voltmeter on the dashboard - 14v when the car is running, but 8-10v when the car is turned off. If I measure the battery directly with my multimeter, it always shows 12v, so I think the gauge is either bad, or there's some extra voltage drops in the wiring. I suspected my compression was bad, but here are the numbers: 1: 175 2: 170 3: 165 4: 150 Other than the low value in #4, they look pretty good to me. The bad news is I'm still stumped at why my car won't start without bump starting it It seems to be getting worse now, and I need a pretty steep hill or several people pushing the car and several tries to get it going. Please give me some more ideas on what I can look at guys, I want my old lovable subie back

No compression test yet - I was busy playing around with the carb and electricals. I followed the Redline Weber tuning guide and set my carb back to normal settings, since it was running terribly. Now the car drives great once the engine is started and idles just fine. However, I pretty much always have to roll it down a hill or push it to get it started when the engine hasn't been run in the past hour. I was thinking about it, and the main difference between cranking the car witih the starter and bump starting it is how fast the engine is turning over. If only I could get my starter to turn the engine as fast as rolling the car down a hill at 5mph, I could get it started every time. I noticed that the stock battery gauge reads about 9v when the engine is off, so I did some investigation of the battery to see if it's weak. However, my multimeter shows that the battery still has 12v when the engine is off, and hooking up extra grounding wires didn't change anything. I think my next stab in the dark is going to be new spark plugs, since the last time I added new ones, the car ran better for a while.

What are people's normal voltage readings from the stock voltage gauge with their engine off and engine on? Should my red "low battery" warning light be on whenever the car is turned off? After I get home I'll poke around with my multimeter and check the grounds.

Cylinder #1 just seems to be sort of weak in general, regardless of whether the car is warm, which I'm guessing is due to poor compression. So I was able to get the car to start somewhat easier by backing the idle mixture screw on the Weber out a whole bunch. The car is still hard to start and runs idles horribly once it's up to temp, but at least I was able to get it started without doing a rolling compression start. According to this tuning guide: http://www.carburetion.com/Weber/adjust.htm there is a problem with the idle jet if the screw needs to be more than 2 turns out. Maybe my idle jet is clogged or malfunctioning somehow?

There's one other interesting thing I noticed when I had it running. I could pull the spark plug wire for any cylinder and it would start running horribly - except cylinder 1. If I took away the spark from cylinder 1, there was no change at all. I guess it's time for a compression test Anything more benign that would cause cyl 1 to make no difference?

Yep, I've charged it fully while it's been sitting in my garage, and the car will crank nicely and quickly, but it won't start. I have 10w30 oil, but it shouldn't be an issue, as it's the same oil weight that was in the car back when it was running fine. Also, the car is in my fairly warm garage right now. So I replaced the ignition coil with a brand new one today, and it still won't start After trying for a good 15 minutes with different throttle/choke positions and strange things such as removing one spark plug while cranking, I was eventually able to get it to start. This gave me a chance to warm the car up to operating temperature for the first time in a while and reset the timing back to 8 degrees. Once the car is running, it's running perfectly. However, after I let it cool down and tried again, it's back to not starting What else can I try here? I'll probably buy another set of spark plugs tomorrow because some of my existing ones are rather fouled-looking. Is there any way to tell if I'm getting too much or too little fuel into the cylinders?

I tried that, and it didn't help

1) The spark plug gap is good, but the spark seemed a little faint to me, so I think I'll pick up a new ignition coil today. 2) The last time this happened 4 months ago, new plugs solved things. However, I tried new plugs again, and it still doesn't like to start. 3) Hadn't heard of this test before - I'll go try it now 4) Humidity doesn't seem to affect things, and I can't find anything wrong with the cap. I've checked the orientation of the distributor rotor and the spark plug wiring as well. Tried replacing all the spark plug wires, but no effect.

K, I opened it up and poked around a bit. The accelerator pump works fine for the primary barrel, but the one for the secondary barrel doesn't squirt at all when I open the throttle. Is this normal? I don't see anything wrong with the float bowl, and everything looks clean and new. Of course I'm a carb newb, so my knowledge is limited to what I've found searching around on the internet.

It's been doing this in any temperature from 90 degrees to 40 degrees, and the car ran fine with the new carb when I first got it, so I don't think it's bad jetting :-\

I don't know what an accelerator pump is, I'll have to look that one up. I'm not sure how easy it is to check the fuel bowl, but I'll try it.

This is crank it 10 sec, wait, crank it for 10 sec, wait, crank it for 10 sec, wait... Maybe on the fourth or fifth try it will sputter a bit. It's been doing this all summer long, even when it's hot out, so I don't think it's (just) the cold. I would almost think it wasn't getting fuel, but I can see the fuel filter fill up and I can smell the gas after cranking it a couple times. I'm pretty much at a loss, and I'm willing to try almost anything, so shoot me some ideas. Also: - Bought a timing light, and tried setting timing advanced and retarded in addition to factory settings, but no change in ease of starting.

I've had this problem on and off for a long time, which has kept me from driving my 83 GL as much as I'd like Whenever the engine is warm, the car will start right up, but when the engine is cold, I'll have to crank the car over and over several times before it will slowly sputter to life. Sometimes the process will take 5 minutes or more. I've tried setting the choke, not setting the choke, pumping the gas while cranking, flooring the gas while cranking, etc, but nothing seems to have an effect. The parts I've added relatively recently that haven't really had any effect are: - Weber 32/36 (Adjusted the idle fuel and idle already) - New spark plugs - New spark plug wires - New distributor cap - New fuel filter The spark plugs are sparking when I pull them out and watch, and I can see the fuel filter fill up with fuel as soon as I start cranking, so I'm a bit at a loss as to why my car is so hard to start. Any other ideas? Thanks

I've searched around the "bad tach" threads, and most of them are diagnosed as a bad distributor. Well, my distributor seems fine, and my symptoms are a little different. My tach used to work fine, but once in a while would start jumping around between 0 and the actual RPMs. The jumping became more frequent until the tach would just rest on 0 all the time. However, the weird thing is the tach will come back to life if I turn the interior fan on full blast. In fact, the higher speed you set the fan for, the more active the tach is. I'm guessing this is probably some bad wiring for the gauge cluster. Any tips on what to look for? Thx

I just want to reiterate that you are my hero! I have the PDFs saved to my computer and use them all the time now.

Like many problems, this one turned out to have a simple solution. The spark plugs were seriously fouled from months of me flooring the gas as I'd turn the car off to work around the dieseling issue. Now that I've un-stuck the throttle plate so it will close all the way and swapped in a fresh set of spark plugs, my car starts and turns off like a dream I've also advanced the timing a couple degrees from 8, so the car is a bit more peppy now.

GLoyale wins I was initially thinking the same thing after the solenoid test turned out fine, but touching a wire to the positive battery terminal and the power terminal on the starter didn't change anything, so I was dubious. However, when I actually mounted a new wire in the brackets and made sure it had plenty of contact area, the starter worked fine! I cleaned off the ends of the original wire, and now the starter is working great. Next stop is figuring out why my car won't start when it's cold

Alright, I tested things out and none of the given explanations seem to fit. 1) Just to be safe I charged my battery til it was full and tried again, as well as hooking up my auxiliary jumper box to it. Charging the battery made no difference, and I should be able to start the car with the jumper box even if the battery was dead. 2) I tried running some beefy wire from the positive battery terminal to the metal tab on the starter, but it behaved in exactly the same way - a loud click like the starter motor was pushing on the gears, but the starter wasn't turning the engine over at all. I would almost think my engine was seized if I couldn't roll start the car just fine. Any other ideas, hopefully that don't involve removing the transmission? :-p

Recently the starter stopped working on my 83 GL. The dash lights and headlights would still dim when turning the key, and I'd still hear the loud "click", but the engine wouldn't turn at all. The starter was getting old, so I ordered a new one and figured that would fix the problem. Well, I just swapped my new starter in, and it has the exact same issue! All my fuses are fine and my connections and battery look good, so I'm not sure what the issue is. If I roll start my car, it works fine, so it's just the starter that has the issue. Anyone have any ideas what to check next? Thanks

I searched, but couldn't find any EA81-specific details on what exactly you do to the distributor to advance or retard the base timing. Embarrassingly, I couldn't find the whole timing light/adjustment procedure in the FSM either Can anyone give me a quick how-to of what to do to change the timing or tell me which chapter/section of the FSM it's in? Thanks!

As my great-grandpa would say, I could pump the gas 'til the cows come home, and it still wouldn't start.

Alright, I've fixed the dieseling by correcting the idle speed, but the car will still only start by rolling. Perhaps it's time to check the timing?

After talking to the Redline guys about some other issues, they sent me a link to this: http://www.redlineweber.com/html/Tech/weber_carburetor_bench_assembly.htm Now that I have my throttle plate freed, I can adjust the idle low enough that my dieseling goes away

I've also verified that my choke works fine. I talked to a Redline employee today, and he said it sounds like I have the common stuck throttle problem, which prevents the throttle from closing all the way. I'll try fixing it tonight and see what happens.