Damn, car left me stranded. Car turns over fine but won't fire. Occasionally stops cranking on it's own. Roadside assistance on the way.

Any ideas?

Pissed, haven't been stranded in years.

 

Check the obvious first. Got fuel? Battery charged?

Hope you get running soon.

 

i remember you got your CPO cab right around the same time I did. My car on day 2 would not start. Dealer ended up replacing the battery and I never had a problem since.

Hope you get to the bottom of this.

 

Fuel check. Battery should be ok. Had it out this morning and then went for a haircut. Left me stranded there.

It is the original battery.

 

Possible crank (or camshaft) position sensor problem. Fairly common problem on the 991.

 

Last time that happened to me, battery went dead and the culprit was the alternator. Replacec alternator and I was good - until I traded in car.

 

If I recall, the car had that replaced previously. Would it go bad more than once?

Car started! I re-started it about 3 times, got some confidence and cancelled roadside assistance, then drove home. When I got in the garage, I turned it off and back on. Started fine.

WTF?

 

It appears that the sensor problem is heat related, thus when the engine cools a bit everything's good. After several no start issues with mine, and finally a sensor replacement, it's been good for the last two years.

 

Thanks.

I looked up the service record of the no start of my car. It was really early on, 28k miles ago. I have all service records on the car and thought since it hadn't cropped up again I'd be good.

I was inside the store for about 30 minutes or so. And earlier I was running errands with 3 stops all a few minutes apart.....

Well, I will bring it in and see what the dealer says. I should say, there is no CEL.

 

If heat related, it seems to me that this problem might be observed during the frequent hot stop/start events when Auto Stop/Start is active. Is there a correlation?

 

Auto stop start is permanently off on my car.

 

If it does turn out to be the battery, take a look at batteriesplus. The recommended AGM battery is $60 less than Autozone and $140 less than the dealership. Mines a 13 also, and it's starting to send me signals.

 

But you were saying that it was turning over fine but just wouldn't fire. Doesn't sound likely to be the battery to me, and if it were the alternator, that would have drained the battery too so I doubt that as well.

While this certainly isn't an apples-to-apples comparison, it reminds me of a fuel pump problem on my pickup truck a couple of years ago. It would fire up fine when cold, it would fire up fine when it sat for a less than 15 minutes or so, but if left to sit longer than that but still not quite yet cold, it wouldn't start for a while without a lot of trying. It was detectable as a slow leak down in fuel pressure while the truck sat still after running, something testable with a basic fuel pressure gauge. That was an easy test on the pickup truck, I don't know how accessible the fitting is on our cars. Of course, it could a number of other things but I couldn't help but notice the similarity. A leaking fuel injector could cause a similar problem, I replaced those on the truck too but that didn't fix it, so the fuel pump was attempt #2.

 

Started it again when I got home from dinner tonight. It started up but ran pretty rough. Idle was bouncing between 600 and 800 RPM. Smoothed out after 30'seconds or so but not normal. Tried another start and it was smoother.

Something definitely up.

 

Crap in fuel (not you!)