Long turnover starting ???

I have a 89 XJ Pioneer w/ 4.0 and AW-4 and 231. Has roughly 186,000 miles on her, by the way I just got it a month ago. Have noticed that it has to turn over for about 3-4 seconds before it fires but it fires up strong at that point, does cold hot and every time...have heard a few other xj's and they all seem to do this. Is this normal:dunno: ?

I sure hope not I like my motors to fire up NOW if not yesterday.

Also there is a factory stile ballast resistor mounted on the driverside fender well towards the front, by the air box...What is this for??

Thanks for the help guys.

Welcome Stealth:

Quick answer---Your CPS (crank postion sensor) my be going bad. try a search for Crank postion sensor.

The ballast resistor is for the fuel pump. I hope others chime in to give you a little more detail.

Have fun with this fourm, I get a lot of great information here I hope you do too.

Pigpen

Its a Renix....most of them take a long time to start.
The Renix will start without a valid cam position signal-it just takes a little longer to find the right place to start. You may also want to check all of your ground cables including the "Renix Killer" (the strap between the head and the firewall).
Good Luck!

I will tell you about my experience with the CPS. To begin with my crank times where ok. Then the CPS began acting up, it was causing a missing/stuttering. I went to Autozone and got a replacement. My start times then went to 6 or 7 seconds. This continued for about a month, then it started missing/stuttering again. Took it back to Autozone and got another one, that one did'nt even work. Went back and got another one, now my start times are back down to less than 3 seconds. I have almost 5000 miles on this one so far and no problems. I have heard that the CPS is good for about a 145,000 miles on average. So you might want to look at that first.

Welcome!

Well I got it fixed pretty good...It was a combinaton of things, found that my cable at the starter was loose when ugradeing to 2ga. Cables...love the cables...this helped it to turn over at almost twice the speed it did before,also ran a new 10guage cable from battery to the square distribution box (starter solonoid) somebody had a 16gu wire for the charge wire. Then a week later I adjusted the TPS to 0.800 volts like the book sais...it was at 0.647, not getting enough fuel, this eliminated the stumbling it did after I spead up the revolutions and now idles much smoother and does not stumble ever. Also had to replace the o2 sensor last week but that was seperate from that, it shorted and went in to rich mode and boy could you tell. Anyway just thought I'ld drop a line.:yap:

How quickly does it start now, could you take a video of it.

I have the capability just not sure how to post it on here, I'ld say right about two seconds, I'll time it later...also when it start it revs to 1300-1400 RPM's then quickly settles in at 700-750 instead of the old 3-4 seconds to start and just barely at about 550-600 RPM's. So how do you post a video?

One other thing , when the coolant sensor is good does the engine have a high idle until it warms up in cool weather or just run a little richer at the normal idle speed?

You can get a free account on Photobucket.com or you can host it on YouTube.

I am not sure about the high idle, mine starts with a spike in idle, but it has only staied at a high idle a couple times.

Have access through them, I'll try later...:doh:

As per what Jeff said. Renix systems do take longer to start, I would say 3-4 secs. is pretty much normal.