really ****ty cold start with a twist - Honda Prelude Forum

plez · 09-03-2009, 05:06 PM

Soooo earlier this summer i swapped a fully built h23 into my 92 si prelude. It was fully rebuilt with high performance everything. It runs great but starts up horrible in the morning. the colder it is the harder it is to start up. it turns over fine but refuses to fire. after about 10 seconds it will spudder and come to life, but then if i give it gas it stalls out and dies or backfires. Its almost like not enough fuel is getting to the motor which could be a fuel filter among other things. For the past few months it has been annoying but not a major problem. BUt.... i live in wisconsin and its starting to get cold out. the other morning it dropped to high 40's and it turned over for about 30 seconds before it finally turned on. My fear is when it gets really cold like below freezing it may not start up at all. I read somewhere it might be the fitv which has a lot to do with cold start up. if anyone has ever heard of a problem like this please let me know. any advice would be greatly appreciated

P.s after the car is warmed up, if i shut it off and turn it on it fires right up

plez · 09-04-2009, 07:56 AM

anyone have a solution?

prepreludesh · 09-04-2009, 08:42 AM

First tell us what your name means.

Second, when your car was "fully built" did it get Forced Induction put on it via a turbocharger? Did it get bigger injectors? Did it get a bump or a lowering in compression ratio? Did you move the distributor cap even a little bit? Is the check engine light on? What spark plugs are you running? When was the last time you changed them and your ignition wires?

Details will help us help you.

My initial thought was either your distributor cap was slightly moved, making your timing off, which will make the car take many starts before it can "catch" but it has no problem when the car is warmed up, because the timing maps have changed when it notices the car is warmed up.

Or you have injectors that are too big and are flooding the engine with too much fuel and you haven't tuned it correctly.