Starting issue

[james.smithson]

Im new to this forum and to cars in general so please be gentle!

I have a 1993 (K) reg Rover 214Si, its not amazing, its not fantastic, but its my first car and it is pretty nice. Now when i first got it it was working very nicely, my first ever drive was on a day that had snowed for hours, started first time.

Overtime it continued to start perfectly, but over the past couple of months its started to become annoying. initially it was just occasionally, when it hadnt been used for quite a bit, then it started being more frequent, at first i thought it was the rain but it happened alot, now its every time i start the car fresh, for example, tommorrow morning ill go to my car, try to start and it wont work first time (see below for symptoms) ill go to college, come out after 2 hours of lessons and itll be ok, then ill leave it for about 3 hours and itll be dead again, not as bad but still annoying.

This is what happens:
Key in ignition, turn, stuggle to start, kicks in and instantly stalls
(Clutch down whilst doing this, sometimes a quick push of the gas to start things flowing)
Start #2, turn, struggle much less, starts, stalls
Start #3, turn, no struggle but unless i start revving will not idle
Keep revving til it will idle, if it does idle ill start trying to accellerate, if i dont do it tactically i.e. tapping it to keep the thing pushing to rev, revs will drop and it will stall if i dont recover it.

Its a pain, im pretty new to this and this car is really nice, great runner when its going, performs better than most middle aged cars i see about and some newer ones. Any ideas what i can do, im not very mechanically wise.

Also, sometimes there is a faint smell of petrol, i put that down to the revving in a small space (inbetween two buildings) but im not sure, like i say, runs great usually, and its not always been like this.

Thanks for your help, James

[Tumble]

Check your fuel filter - either that's blocked and it's not getting enough petrol through or your auto-choke is up the spout and it's flooding the engine with fuel - if you're smelling it then it's probably the latter...

anyone else care to shoot me down in flames on this??

[james.smithson]

that doesnt sound too good..

[Jiff Lemon]

Basic things first:
When was it last serviced?
When you say Dead, do you mean refuses to crank over, or just struggles to start?
What sort of journeys do you do? lots of short stop/start journeys?

Couple of possible things it could be:
1) Battery
2) Idle air control valve.

[Nox]

unlikely to be the battery - if it was the battery it wouldn't turn over OR provide enough oomph to spark the plugs, the engine is starting, then stalling. You can test this by charging the battery and seeing if it still does the same!

I would agree in it sounding most likely to be a fuelling prob, whether this is related to efi or supply though... though I had a similar thing with dodgy spark plugs (glazed over a bit!)

Pray for the fuel filter, its (mostly likely) a 10 min job and a £2.50 part. Did you let the fuel level run down recently?

Nox

[Angus]

I don't normally pimp other forums, but you might be able to find some help at forums.mg-rover.org. If I remember correctly there's a problem that's fairly unique to rovers, but I can't remember what the details were.

Mods remove if you find this objectional.

[5lab]

it sounds like whatever inj the engine makes the 'choke' work isnt working properly - i'd try shoving some cleanign stuff down the air intake.. at a guess its the cold start sensor

in the meantime, start the car with your foot half-down on the accellerator, and just rev it till it warms up enough to keep idling

[james.smithson]

right, well its being a bitch still, it was serviced in march this year, my journeys are usually pretty short, the furthest ive been is york (from leeds) not too far.

The revving thing is whats keeping it going, when its cold itll start its just that first start in a while thats a pain.. Would that explain it?