Hot start (Page 1/1) john carter FEB 09, 08:46 AM I have an 87 GT with a hot starting issue. When the engine is cold, it fires right up. After running an errand, and trying to re-start , the engine keeps cranking. When it finally starts, it blows black smoke and runs rough till it clears out....then its fine. Any ideas for a solution? Thanks 82-T/A [At Work] FEB 09, 09:24 AM quote Originally posted by john carter: I have an 87 GT with a hot starting issue. When the engine is cold, it fires right up. After running an errand, and trying to re-start , the engine keeps cranking. When it finally starts, it blows black smoke and runs rough till it clears out....then its fine. Any ideas for a solution? Thanks A "hot start" issue is almost always as a result of a starter that's getting too hot from the exhaust, and as a result... somewhat heating up and not being able to turn over. When you try to re-start your car... does it crank perfectly fine? Or does your starter have a really hard time (does it sound strained)? If the answer is no... then the other question would be fuel. The other case (I'm aware of) where there's lots of black smoke on start-up, is too much fuel in the system. It's possible that your injectors are leaking, allowing it to pool in the combustion chamber and on top of the pistons... which makes it difficult to start and then when it does... black smoke. My only advice then is to have the injectors serviced... or perhaps the easiest / cheapest thing you can do is run a can of Seafoam through your engine and see if that solves the problem. Go to the auto parts store, and buy one of those white cans (red lettering) of Seafoam. Go to the gas station, dump the ENTIRE bottle into your gas tank, and then fill up. THIS IS IMPORTANT. If you put the whole bottle into your tank and you only have 1/4 of a tank, you could possibly burn your catalytic converter (unlikely, but I've seen it). So after you fill up, go for a drive, and feel free to do a lot of highway driving. This will clean all the deposits in the combustion chamber, and as such, also clean any buildup in your injectors (around the injector discs). Be forewarned... expect a CRAZY, CRAZY amount of black smoke as it burns off carbon and other deposits. Don't be alarmed though, it's not bad at all... just part of the process. Normally you won't see it. But after like an hour of driving, if you decide to floor it... it causes a lot of that stuff to break free all at once, and then it burns up in the cyls or the cat and you get tons of black smoke. After about half a tank, your car will feel like it's a completely brand new car... like.. throttle response, idle, everything will be amazingly better. There's other stuff you can do too... there's a BG44 kit that some people do which you feed in through the brake booster line and it cleans out the intake passages (and more quickly clears the carbon deposits). But you should also remove the intake tube and Idle Air Control valve and spray carb cleaner in there to get any gunk or recycled EGR gas from there. Seafoam is the quick cheap fix... and that's what I would do before spending any money or putting too much effort into diagnosing it. john carter FEB 09, 12:59 PM Thanks for the info. I bought a bottle of the Seafoam and will run it tomorrow. How do you dis-connect the cold start injector? I been reading some threads, and they seem to have the same symptoms as me. Seems you can un-plug a connector that will dis- able this injector with no performance problems. It's just I don't know where this connector is! I'm still gonna run the Seafoam though. THANKS Patrick FEB 09, 05:27 PM Sounds to me like possible leaky injectors. Connect a fuel pressure tester and see how fast the fuel pressure drops when the engine is turned off. It should not drop quickly.