Hello

ive had my 97WRX since end of october now.

Since then in november, and twice since new year, i can come to the car (when its been stood for a while) and go to turn it over, and wont fire straight up. the battery is fine, the starter is turning the engine over but i have to pump the pedal to get it to fire up. Like you would with an old car on carbs thats been out in the cold (like the good old days with my mk2 RS2000)

Thing is after that, its fine, like i said its happend 3 times in 4months so not like it does it everyday. But not sure what it is, for anyone whos not tried starting an old carb'd car its like trying to turn over a car with no fuel in the tank.

Something worth mentioning is this, a couple of times within the 1st month of having it, when id park up after a journey i could smell a little petrol in the air when i got out. havent noticed it since, but thought id mention it.

Any ideas?

 

bump

 

did it again this morning when i finished work at 1am. It had been snowing and it was freezing.

i had to put my foot to the floor then it fired up, but wouldnt turn over simply by a turning the key and blipping the throttle

 

I had a similar thing and it was cured by cleaning the earths.
remove the battery negative, clean the inside of the clamp with emery paper or glass paper.
from the neg terminal there are two earths, one to the front of the car above the headlight to the bodywork and one to the neg terminal on the starter.
Clean the terminal to each with glass paper and also where it bolts to.
Be careful with the one to the starter though as you have to remove a long bolt to get to it and this can then clash with the starter positive terminal not good, dont short the battery!

If you want to see in advance if this is the issue then use a multimeter to test the resistance, it should be at or below 1ohm in each case.

When I had starter issues the reading across the earth was 3.5ohms and in the case of my (so called) uprated earth kit, 6 ohms!

 

I was just about to say the earths but peanuts beat me to it... Try cleaning them up matie

 

will do thanks for your replies, appreciate that!