KonaBlue5.0

Hey guys. I figured I would post this here before looking to the dealer, just in case I'm (somehow) doing something wrong! With my past experience in rotaries, a longer-than-usual crank time is usually caused by fuel flooding the combustion chambers after the engine was turned off. Bad tuning, a tired engine, etc could all cause this.

Now from my, admittedly limited, experience with piston engines, even if this occurs, the fuel would seep down while the engine is shut off, negating the possibility of this problem.

Well, this weekend I came back from a long trip to the Ocean, and on the morning I was leaving, my car kind of got "stuck" cranking. I know we have automatic cranking, which obviously would have the car crank and crank and crank until finally it starts. This is exactly what happened, and it took a good 3-4 seconds to actually start, instead of the usual, maybe .5 seconds to catch.

I was a little off-put by this, but she ran perfectly well (at times, like a bat-out-of-hell) all the way home (4+ hours). Anyways, a stop for gas on the way home, starts up just like usual, etc etc. Well, today I had to return to work. First start of the morning...wierd. 3+ seconds to start. Now I'm getting a little worried, because I can't imagine my 7500 mile engine is getting anywhere near tired! Any thoughts on what might be causing this?

sam strano

You might want to ask your dealer to check into available TSB's for the car. I believe there is a service fix out to address that issue (and a few others as well). I found this on my car and was lucky enough to have some excellent help from some good guys @ Ford. I think you'll find they'll just need to relearn the misfire profile and it's having a hard time reading the crank sensor properly all the time.

Lancel

No idea. This has happened to me I think a total of three times, all with less than 1000 miles on the odometer and relatively closely spaced like you describe. Did exactly the same sort of thing. A few others have reported similar incidents. Now it's at over 3000 miles and it hasn't happened again. I never did anything to it so I don't know if there's just some weird condition that causes the combustion chambers to flood or what.