Citroen Visa GTI not starting

[philibusmo]

Hi all,

 

I know that Jon has a thread on this car somewhere which I really should update but I can't be bothered to find it anywhere, anyway, I have an issue.

 

The car is a 1986 Citroen Visa GTI located in NZ. It's been in regular use by me the last couple of months and has been excellent. It's never been good at cold starting or and has idled high but the past few days cold starts have been really bad.

 

I replaced the supplementary air device to try and cure this but it has not worked and the car has got so bad that it's now impossible to start. I've tried cleaning out the SAD and reattaching, changed the dizzy cap, rotor arm and the throttle position sensor to no effect.

 

The spark plugs are sparking but it seems like it's running really rich at start up as when I pull a plug its wet. It turns over without starting and will cough and splutter, almost running briefly.

 

It has had an intermittent cough or hesitation at constant low revs or at very high revs recently which is almost certainly connected but I can't get to the bottom of any of it.

 

Mucking around with the mixture screw and air volume screws on the MAF and throttle body have made no difference either.

 

Anyone have enough knowledge of the Bosche K Jet fuel injection systems to give some suggestions?

[HillmanImp]

If the airflow meter is the same as the ones on 205 GTIs then that is almost certainly going to be the culprit as they are always causing problems aren't they? Do you know anyone with a spare one you can swap over?

[hairnet]

ask six cylinder to ask mikee for you

[JayW]

Weak coil? Mine failed on the kjet BX, was replaced with a new one and a week later starting descended into non-starting. I was still getting a spark but it was weak and insufficient. Although, the same could be said of the Amp.

[M'coli]

^^^  Good shout, this happened on a non-injected 309 the wife owned - it had enough of a spark to power the rev counter and show in daylight, but not enough to ignite the mixture.  Fixed with a new coil.

 

Try a smaller gap on a plug first, that may help.

[philibusmo]

A day of dicking around with this got it running again.

 

The parts changed in the end were the air flow meter, coil and the ECU temperature sensor. I've no idea which was the problem as I changed them all at once. I'll work on a process of elimination later as its now out of tune (timing out and micture incorrect) so needs a bit of further work.

 

Thanks for your help guys, obvious suggestions but I was suffering serious brain fatigue yesterday evening.