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NOTE: I know this is a long post, but there's a lot of information I have and the more I give you guys, the better diagnosis and ideas you will have. TL;DR at bottom
When I go to start my car sometimes the engine will start to struggle immediately (sounds exactly like it's not getting enough gas to it) and will stall unless I give it some throttle. Sometimes it will just need a little pump or two of the pedal, but then sometimes it will need a constant 1.5-2k rpm hold for a couple of seconds on my part. Sometimes it starts right up with no problems, it never struggles after I fill the tank and just recently it's actually been happening less and less. I suspect that is because I have been very nice to it in regard to how much fuel I keep in the tank since my period of abuse.
So to start it off, there was a period of time where I was kind of struggling financially so frequently I was running the car below E. I would never let it get to completely empty by just keeping track of the mileage left and how many miles I've been adding. I now know how stupid that is now and no longer do it..
One day though I had to get to work and couldn't stop for gas, so I kind of pushed it a little further than usual. I knew when I got off of work there would still be like ~5 miles left, but when I tried to start it, it just couldn't do it and wasn't getting gas to the engine no matter how hard it tried. I tried priming the engine a couple of times and looking back on it, all I was doing is running air through the system. I ran over to the gas station, got $2 of gas to put in it, primed, and it started up.
I am fairly confident that this incident is what caused my problem. I don't have any symptoms of a bad fuel injector, my throttle body is clean, my MAS is clean, and it's actually getting better over time and the only thing I've been doing since tonight of this post is keeping a good amount of fuel in the car unlike before. It all leads to the pump in my opinion... Any thoughts?
Right now my theory that I'm testing is if I prime the engine before every start, it should never have the problem again since the fuel that the pump is struggling to get to the engine at startup will already be there. Plus, my theory is that in doing this, it will hopefully clean and lubricate and maybe fix the pump further since I have seen an improvement over time without any priming. I just came up with this while making this post, and have only tested it once a minute ago. The car last ran around 10 hours ago (once it starts and gets going, it usually won't do it again for a little while, sometimes longer than others), it's 52°F outside at 78% humidity (a little high for the month) but I'm not sure if that matters, I primed three times and it started literally perfectly, better than I've seen in a while. Usually when I start it, I'm listening carefully, watching the RPMs, and almost always am a little hesitant on whether or not I need to give it gas even when it starts without me. It's not usually a clean start unless I fill it up at the gas station. Like I said, this is the first time I've tried this and the start was flawless. UPDATE: I've been alternating whether I prime or not each time I start the car. So far my theory is 100% working. Maybe it won't fix over time, but I can hope it does at least a little.
Side note: I should probably get a new air filter, but it's not unusable, just a little older than I would prefer.
TL;DR: When I go to start my car it struggles and sounds like it's not getting enough gas. If I don't give the car some throttle (amount varies with each start), it will stall. I've found priming the engine before each start actually makes the issue go away (until I do a normal start and it'll happen again). I suspect it's from running my car to almost completely E in the past.
When I go to start my car sometimes the engine will start to struggle immediately (sounds exactly like it's not getting enough gas to it) and will stall unless I give it some throttle. Sometimes it will just need a little pump or two of the pedal, but then sometimes it will need a constant 1.5-2k rpm hold for a couple of seconds on my part. Sometimes it starts right up with no problems, it never struggles after I fill the tank and just recently it's actually been happening less and less. I suspect that is because I have been very nice to it in regard to how much fuel I keep in the tank since my period of abuse.
So to start it off, there was a period of time where I was kind of struggling financially so frequently I was running the car below E. I would never let it get to completely empty by just keeping track of the mileage left and how many miles I've been adding. I now know how stupid that is now and no longer do it..
One day though I had to get to work and couldn't stop for gas, so I kind of pushed it a little further than usual. I knew when I got off of work there would still be like ~5 miles left, but when I tried to start it, it just couldn't do it and wasn't getting gas to the engine no matter how hard it tried. I tried priming the engine a couple of times and looking back on it, all I was doing is running air through the system. I ran over to the gas station, got $2 of gas to put in it, primed, and it started up.
I am fairly confident that this incident is what caused my problem. I don't have any symptoms of a bad fuel injector, my throttle body is clean, my MAS is clean, and it's actually getting better over time and the only thing I've been doing since tonight of this post is keeping a good amount of fuel in the car unlike before. It all leads to the pump in my opinion... Any thoughts?
Right now my theory that I'm testing is if I prime the engine before every start, it should never have the problem again since the fuel that the pump is struggling to get to the engine at startup will already be there. Plus, my theory is that in doing this, it will hopefully clean and lubricate and maybe fix the pump further since I have seen an improvement over time without any priming. I just came up with this while making this post, and have only tested it once a minute ago. The car last ran around 10 hours ago (once it starts and gets going, it usually won't do it again for a little while, sometimes longer than others), it's 52°F outside at 78% humidity (a little high for the month) but I'm not sure if that matters, I primed three times and it started literally perfectly, better than I've seen in a while. Usually when I start it, I'm listening carefully, watching the RPMs, and almost always am a little hesitant on whether or not I need to give it gas even when it starts without me. It's not usually a clean start unless I fill it up at the gas station. Like I said, this is the first time I've tried this and the start was flawless. UPDATE: I've been alternating whether I prime or not each time I start the car. So far my theory is 100% working. Maybe it won't fix over time, but I can hope it does at least a little.
Side note: I should probably get a new air filter, but it's not unusable, just a little older than I would prefer.
TL;DR: When I go to start my car it struggles and sounds like it's not getting enough gas. If I don't give the car some throttle (amount varies with each start), it will stall. I've found priming the engine before each start actually makes the issue go away (until I do a normal start and it'll happen again). I suspect it's from running my car to almost completely E in the past.
