Hard Starting

[spow11]

Good evening,
Having a small problem with starting. All was well until tonight and I cant figure out what has changed. Attached is a msq & msl.

Thanks
Steve

[grom_e30]

battery a bit weak maybe?

[spow11]

Yes the battery is a bit weak. However on Monday the engine fired up straight away. Now it doesn't want to?

I thought I would try and use the log to identify the problem. Just lacking a bit of experience at the moment.

Cheers
Steve

[Matt Cramer]

You may want to adjust cranking pulse width a little at that temperature.

However, your battery voltage does drop a lot. It was down to 7.7 volts on the first attempted start, falling as low as 5.2 volts (if that's not an MS3-Pro, I'm amazed it's even staying switched on at that point...) on subsequent attempts.

[spow11]

Well, it turned out to be fouled plugs not sparking. All six of them. Have been doing a lot of warm up runs trying to get the idle sorted.

Tried cleaning a couple of the plugs but they just didn't want to spark. This same thing happened about 3 yrs ago when I was recommissioning the car after a refurbishment. I had the old fouled plugs in a draw. Took them out, tested them, put them in and the engine fired up on the button.

Cheers
Steve