Had a fun one last night. Brother in law of the owner of the company I work for has a 2005 Freestyle that said owner got for him to help him out a bit. I usually help keep her on the road when he has issues. He v-mails me about a week ago and tells me his car stalled at a stop light and won't start. I finally acquiesce and tell him to just have it towed to the place where I work so I could look at it even though I have enough other things going on.
Engine cranks just fine, but will not start. I check for spark and it has it. I pull two of the three plugs on the front bank and they are fairly well soaked in fuel and I can hear the fuel pump coming on with key on so I figure the pump is at least doing something. ECT reading looks to be accurate. This car has a returnless fuel system so it just uses a fuel rail pressure sensor to monitor pressure and modulates the pump output to regulate it. Fuel pressure key on is like 2 psi, but it did build while cranking up to about 40 psi. At this point the battery is wearing down from all the cranking he did and my checks so I bring it home and throw it on my charger.
I head back in last night and throw the new battery in. No change (not that I expected anything). I pull the connector from the fuel rail pressure sensor and the 5V reference signal is good. Everything tells me the sensor is working fine. I figure what the heck, I'll see if I can at least get the engine to cough and sputter off of some starting fluid to at least give me some hope. I take the air intake tube off the throttle body and gas comes pouring out of the throttle body. What??!? The throttle body is probably 4" above the injectors. There is no way the entire intake is full of fuel or the engine would have hydrolocked, but where did all of the gas come from?? The fuel rail pressure sensor has a vacuum reference signal. I pulled that line off and it was full of fuel. Basically every time the pump ran it was pumping fuel up to the rail through that sensor, into the vacuum line and then into the upper intake manifold. It must be hard for it to travel down into the engine from where it was coming in and instead was easier to go out through the throttle body.
I wound up pulling the upper and lower intake and all of the plugs so hopefully the engine can dry out while I wait for parts. The upper intake probably had 10-12 ounces of fuel in it. The little sound cancelling chamber in the air intake tube probably had 2 quarts of fuel in it. Crazy. I would have never guessed. Mind you, I'm doing all of this outside in the parking lot at work because I can't have an inop car in the building during normal business hours.
Tomorrow hopefully all of the parts show up and I get to put it back together.
Engine cranks just fine, but will not start. I check for spark and it has it. I pull two of the three plugs on the front bank and they are fairly well soaked in fuel and I can hear the fuel pump coming on with key on so I figure the pump is at least doing something. ECT reading looks to be accurate. This car has a returnless fuel system so it just uses a fuel rail pressure sensor to monitor pressure and modulates the pump output to regulate it. Fuel pressure key on is like 2 psi, but it did build while cranking up to about 40 psi. At this point the battery is wearing down from all the cranking he did and my checks so I bring it home and throw it on my charger.
I head back in last night and throw the new battery in. No change (not that I expected anything). I pull the connector from the fuel rail pressure sensor and the 5V reference signal is good. Everything tells me the sensor is working fine. I figure what the heck, I'll see if I can at least get the engine to cough and sputter off of some starting fluid to at least give me some hope. I take the air intake tube off the throttle body and gas comes pouring out of the throttle body. What??!? The throttle body is probably 4" above the injectors. There is no way the entire intake is full of fuel or the engine would have hydrolocked, but where did all of the gas come from?? The fuel rail pressure sensor has a vacuum reference signal. I pulled that line off and it was full of fuel. Basically every time the pump ran it was pumping fuel up to the rail through that sensor, into the vacuum line and then into the upper intake manifold. It must be hard for it to travel down into the engine from where it was coming in and instead was easier to go out through the throttle body.
I wound up pulling the upper and lower intake and all of the plugs so hopefully the engine can dry out while I wait for parts. The upper intake probably had 10-12 ounces of fuel in it. The little sound cancelling chamber in the air intake tube probably had 2 quarts of fuel in it. Crazy. I would have never guessed. Mind you, I'm doing all of this outside in the parking lot at work because I can't have an inop car in the building during normal business hours.
Tomorrow hopefully all of the parts show up and I get to put it back together.
