rotar_rump

Let me start by saying I had NO IDEA that there could be such a friendly group of racers and enthusiasts as what I encountered in my first two events this weekend. Great group and very, very helpful. Now, on to what happened.

It was a rather hot weekend hitting about 103 with LOTS of humidity. Everything was fine during my runs for the event. Since there weren't a whole lot of cars, we finished early and everyone got to do some fun runs. I was doing 3 back to back to back runs then letting the car cool off for 15-20min. After Saturday's event, the car died on my way home cruising @ 3200 RPM. Wouldn't start for about 15 minutes. When I tried to start it in that time, it would spin up to 500 then die immediately. Once it did start, it sounded like intermitant spark, a rough, long start but ran fine later.

The same thing happened at Sunday's event...not a lot of cars and fun runs. This time it died on my last run of the fun runs. Cooled off and it fired up right away. I didn't think to check until it had been sitting for a while if I was getting any spark from the coils. My thought is that the coils got overheated. Car had 84k miles during the event.

I wanted to see if you all had any ideas or experiance with a similar problem or in similar conditions. Would love to get to them bottom of this and get running right and well. Thanks all in advance.

[back story] Bought the car at the end of April, 2004 6 speed Grand Touring. Had 78k miles on original motor and appeared WELL taken care of, not just the cleaned up parts the dealership does when trying to sell. Clutch feels good, engine has never shown any hesitation or problems to me. I started pre-mixing my second tank @ 800:1 with a good TCW3 2-stroke oil. Car sees mostly interstate miles and I make sure to utilize those extra RPMs to "de-carbonize" the engine. Cleaning out the car completely for autocross I came across the original owner's registration so I'm thinking of writing him to find out exactly what kind of care he gave this car.

wcs

iTrader: (2)

Coils, absolutely would be the first thing I would do

Ummmmm on a side note (and I would have to go check again) but I thought TCW3 was not a good choice for using as a premix

yiksing

1. Check Coils, Plugs
2. Updated starter?
3. Fuel Pump Issues (most needed upgrading if tracked)

elysium19

iTrader: (1)

keep in mind as a side note that high humidity makes YOU feel hotter, but it's actually much better for cooling your car. higher humidity means the air has more water in it, which has a greater thermal capacity, which means it transfers heat from your radiators better than dry air at the same temperature. That's the reason people in the southwest are always fretting about cooling, and it's not nearly the same issue in the very humid northeast

good luck troubleshooting..