My Jeep froze to death....literally

[1985xjlaredo]

I even shot a blast of carb cleaner into the intake hose while my son was cranking it.

Carb cleaner makes my XJ stall. Try ether

 

[Overdriven]

I have read this entire thread & see what you have checked & tested. If it cranks, & and you are sure you have good spark. We need to know what fuel PSI at the rail. I don't care if you hear the pump run for a couple seconds or that you pushed in the schraider valve and it had pressure. We need to know about PSI & voulumn? Period.

I haven't found a discount tool company up here yet. The local parts place had a fuel pressure tester at $60. I'm going to call around and hopefully find a better price on one. I'm afraid it's going to tell me I need to drop another $150 or better on a fuel pump. That's what I get for letting it outside with only a quarter tank of gas.

 

[nick86]

Now thats the worst advice so far starting fluids that contain ether will wash down the cylinder walls & when it does fire, may do damage to rings, valves, bent rod's, the list goes on.

I say again. what is your fuel pressure, buy a guage.

 

[nick86]

Bite the bullet & buy a gauge(it will come in handy in the future) fuel PSI should be 35 - 40 when you do a key on. What I like to do is leave the key on, and bleed off the gauge, than crank it, the fuel PSI should go right back up, if not the computer is not telling the pump to run. Means it's not seeing a cps signal, no oil psi, yada,yada. My .02 cents from a trillion miles away.

 

[Overdriven]

I appreciate the info and this is what I'll be doing first thing tomorrow.
I've been meaning to buy one for a while... should have done so before I moved to the great white north. Everything up here is much more expensive than what it was in Texas.

 

[Overdriven]

Bought the Fuel pressure tester and these are my results.
Turn the key to run = 15psi
Crank the engine = 42psi

It bleeds off fairly quickly though. It'll go from 40psi to 10 psi in a matter of 10-20 seconds after I let off the key.

I'm running 5.0 mustang fuel injectors. Guess I'm swapping back to stock injectors.

 

[ColoradoRaptor]

Advise is a double edged sword!! I had the same issue this hunting season. Was camped at 10000' and overnight temp was -21. Got up at 4am went out to start the heep and what do ya know did not like the cold at all!! At first it fired and sputtered for about 10 sec then died. 20 minutes of off and on cranking later it finally started again sputtering then smoothed out seconds later. Dumb ass me did not think to treat the cheap ass gas I bought before going hunting!! :gee: Moral of this story.....did not cost me a dime to figure this one out.

 

[Overdriven]

It's Alive.
2 culprits.

1st was the fact that I had been using the wrong coolant temp sensor. I did the HO swap into my renix system and had been using the HO coolant temp sensor.

This had been causing my XJ to run too rich for a long time. This led to my

2nd problem - plugs are foulded to the point that it wouldn't fire. Too much fuel and too little spark is what kept my XJ from running.

Put new plugs in and got the right sensor and I'm back on the road. Thanks for all the advice everyone.

 

[gone postal]

Bought the Fuel pressure tester and these are my results.
Turn the key to run = 15psi
Crank the engine = 42psi

It bleeds off fairly quickly though. It'll go from 40psi to 10 psi in a matter of 10-20 seconds after I let off the key.

I'm running 5.0 mustang fuel injectors. Guess I'm swapping back to stock injectors.

Digging up an old thread here, but the fuel pressure bleeding off that fast isn't good either. There is a check valve built into the pump and sounds like yours is bad. This happened on my '91 trail rig and sometimes would take awhile to start. I did the BMW part fix (probably be able to search on here for more info - it's been a few years now since I did it). It made an instant, noticeable difference. It will now start fast whether it's been sitting 10 minutes or a day since it's last start. That obviously wasn't your problem, but it was a cheap $9 part and only took 15 minutes.