Car intermittently won't start
 

No symptoms. MAYBE the car was down a little on power in the morning. Maybe. Drove 20 minutes from work to Harbor Freight. Ran well. Idled well. Restarted fine. Drove down the street to Lowes. Got my stuff, came back to the car and it wouldn't start. This is about 5PM. It sputtered, stumbled a couple of times and died. Tried a bunch of times. Best it would do is sputter and stumble a handful of times before stalling. Wiggled and reconnected the MAF connector. No change. Came back at 9PM to get the car towed when the parking lot had cleared out. Tried the car, same deal. Tow guy never came. Called a second one around 10PM. Tried the car again. Didn't even sputter. Just turned over. Second tow guy never came. Gave up at midnight. Tried the car again. Still nothing. Went back this morning to try and get it towed. Tried the car. After turning over a few times it started. WTF?!?!? The idled bounced a little but it stayed running. Turned it off. Tried again. Same. Tow guy shows up, of course. Car starts up again. He follows me home, just in case, and then brings me back to pick up my other car.

Any thoughts? I have recently cleaned the MAF and the contacts and resoldered the connector on the internal PCB. I also recently replaced a known bad TPS with a new used one. It has been working fine.

Re: Car intermittently won't start
 

Any error codes that could offer a clue?

I've had similar symptoms due to a bad MAF plug (after trying 3 different MAFs...).

Re: Car intermittently won't start
 

[QUOTE Any thoughts? I have recently cleaned the MAF and the contacts and resoldered the connector on the internal PCB. I also recently replaced a known bad TPS with a new used one. It has been working fine.[/QUOTE]

It would appear that the problem has occurred after the above has taken place. Intermittent faults are often due to dry soldered joints or bad connections, which change as a result of temperature due to being left for a while.

I suggest that you go back over everything involved with this in mind. In particular the "new" TPS should be treated as suspect.

Why did you change the TPS? Did you positively diagnose the exact fault, i.e. that the fault was actually within and due to the TPS?

Re: Car intermittently won't start
 

It would appear that the problem has occurred after the above has taken place. Intermittent faults are often due to dry soldered joints or bad connections, which change as a result of temperature due to being left for a while.

I suggest that you go back over everything involved with this in mind. In particular the "new" TPS should be treated as suspect.

Why did you change the TPS? Did you positively diagnose the exact fault, i.e. that the fault was actually within and due to the TPS?[/QUOTE]

I should specify that the MAF was refurbished a couple years ago with no issues since. But I will check it. But I am pretty good at soldering. I will also check the TPS as that is easy to do. But, yeah, the old TPS had definitely developed a worn spot at the position where it usually sits when I am cruising on the highway. I caught the voltages jumping with my scan tool and they no longer do so with the newish TPS.

Re: Car intermittently won't start
 

Found the problem!

It wasn't starting again this morning. I couldn't hear the fuel pump so I squeezed the fuel line to see if it was under pressure and it didn't feel like it. So I assumed that it couldn't hurt to do the work of uncovering the top of the fuel tank as it would save time if it needed a new pump. Also, I could get really close and listen for the pump. When I got the back seat and carpet off, I turned the key to run and heard nothing. I popped the connector off so I could measure the voltage at the pins. One of the pins was already half way out and the connector around the pump pins was yellow. So I pushed the loose pin back into the connector, cleaned all the pins and applied my new best friend, Stabilant 22A. Popped the connector back on, turned the key and the pump was gurgling like normal. It started right up..
Brought my dog to Dunkin.

Re: Car intermittently won't start
 

Excellent! Glad it was an easy fix.