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I did a major service on a 150K 1988 240 DL sedan. New belts, water pump, plugs, rotor, cap, fuel filter, brake fluid, etc. Car had been very badly neglected except for possibly motor oil. Brake fluid, timing belt, fuel filter, water pump were all factory originals. Car still seems to have a lot of power, considering what the previous owners did not attend to.
The problem I currently have is that the car starts unevenly. Some mornings it kicks right off. Other times, after only sitting for four or five hours in a garage, it will take two, and even sometimes three attempts to get going. A friend of mine says it's absolutely a leaky injector, that it is leaking fuel into the intake manifold, the plugs get wet, the car floods and won't start. He removes the in-tank and out-tank fuel pump fuses, cranks the starter for a little bit, and it takes off. To me this explanation makes no sense. The sign of a leaky injector is that the engine kicks over instantly because of the fuel in the manifold and then dies because all the fuel rail pressure has bled away and the engine has to crank for a while for the fuel pump to build pressure back up again.
I've put too much cheap injector cleaner into an almost empty tank (very dumb) to do a faster cleaning job, and had the cleaner eat out the guts of the check valve that sits in the line beside the fuel filter, making the car harder and harder to start as the fuel pressure bleeds away back into the tank. But the fact that it starts right up sometimes, and other times you crank and let it set and crank some more and then it slowly takes off puzzles me.
Any suggestions, please! Is there a defective fuel pump relay somewhere that could be the cause of this erratic starting, or is it the in-line check valve that is slowly starting to go? Once the check valve starts to go, the slow start is fairly consistent, not erratic. But maybe I'm wrong. Dick
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