I have read about it on nam for a while... And my car seems to do this.

It will only do it when the car has been sitting for a while outside. The car is garage kept and in the morning it starts and runs just fine right from teh getgo... However when I leave work at night time and it's under 35 degrees... the car does not want to run at all until its warmed up.

The last two days have beene especially bad. The car starts on the first turn of the key and will idle fine. The second I try to pull away from the parking spot the car will sputter and spit and not want to go any where. If i sink my foot into the gas nothing happens and the car seems to choke itself even more.

Today for the first time it actually stalled and backfired and through and SES light. It was there last year and happened once in a while but this year it seems worse. It prob happened two times all of last year and it's happened twice already.

I'm thinking that the denso ik-22's and the possibly the cai are not helping the problem at all. Just for reference once the car is warmed up a bit... and doesn't do teh stalling thing it runs just fine. Also when i get home from my 17 mile commute the ic, ic horns are cold to the touch. In addition the air filter and silicone tube are very cold... The head is barley warm...

I wont be able to get autozone to read the odbc code until tomorow... any thoughts before then?
thanks
erik

 

we had a problem with stumbling during cold start up and took it to the dealer, they reflashed, and everything resolved itself, not to mention its a lot smoother now. Our car is a factory JCW, stock though, so I can't speak to how your mods play into this. . .

 

How far is your morning commute? Is the car able to get hot in the morning? If not it may be the same kind of problem that a lot of us MCS owners have had.......if the car doesn't get hot it is still running very rich when shut off and this leads to start up problems. This is the only time I have ever run into the cold start/idle problem.

 

my commute is about 17 miles all at 60mph. The water temp guage goes to center but honestly, I'd doubt it's fully warmed up.

 

If 17 miles at 60 can't warm it, I don't know what will. Since your engine is water cooled, it should keep the thermostat closed until the engine is up to normal operating temperature, then it will open and blend coolant from the radiator to maintain proper temperature. It isn't actually all or nothing.
If you want your engine to warm up faster, don't use your heater at first. That is a radiator, too, and will significantly cool the engine in your cold winters.
Back in the old days I learned if a car was overheating, you shut off all the accessories except for the heater on high, and drove lightly to continue to flow air through the radiator. That extra "radiator" called the heater core would often make the difference and bring the engine temps back down.
I drive better cars now, thank goodness!

 

It should be warmed up by that time. You might try letting the car idle a bit at work in the morning just to let it get as warm as possible. Or if that doesn't help just contact your dealer and verify that you have the latest software.

 

v42 fixed mine.

 

So you had this same problem Ken and the dealer flashed a new ecu for you and it fixed it? That would be good news for me because from what I was reading in the stickied thread I couldn't tell if my problem was the same as those being discussed there.

Mine definatly gets worse when it's doing it and I sink my foot into the gas. It will kind come out of it but barley much at all.

 

my car has the same issue; at least it did last winter. Leaving work I usually let it run for at least a minute before I drove off (not a real issue as I need time to plug in the iPod, etc). It's due for a check & service soon so I hope they perform this reflash, it might positively impact the dreaded 3500 rmp stumble that my car has as well...

 

Software reflash at the dealer has fixed my cold start stumble completely! Hallelujah!