Troubleshooting Tips When Your Car Won't Start

Okay, we're going to talk about some some things to look at if your car doesn't start. Uh, obviously the first thing you want to determine, does the engine crank? In other words, when you get in, turn the key, does a starter crank the engine? That usually means that the battery is okay and the starter is working. Uh, next thing that you might want to check is make sure that you don't have a sensor that's unplugged, like your mass air flow sensor right here. You want to make sure all these connections are tight right here. And uh on the throttle body itself, you want to make sure all these connections are all pushed in, everything's tight, nothing's loose. You want to check for vacuum hoses, make sure they're they haven't come off, anything like that. Um next thing that you might want to do is uh you know, see make sure that uh you can try and hear the fuel listen for the fuel pump. If you turn the key on and then turn it off, you might should be able to hear the fuel pump hum a little bit. Sometimes the fuel pump relay goes out or the fuel pump quits. Uh the unfortunate thing about today's fuel pumps are in the tank and uh a lot of people do not change their fuel filters as often as recommended and they run the gas fuel tank level down too low and that is a recipe for premature fuel pump failure. When your fuel pump quits like that, uh probably need to get your auto club card out and have your car towed in because that's about the only way you're going to repair it because the fuel tank will have to be removed in order to get to the pump. And if you do replace the pump, you should also replace the filter and the sock filter that's inside the tank and make sure the tank is clean before you put a new or remanufactured pump back in uh to repair it. So, those are some of the some of the things that you need to check. Some other things you can do, uh it's uh you know, you got to be very careful doing it. You can take some starting fluid and sometimes spray it in the air intake just a little bit, not a whole lot, and see if the engine will start for a second. And if the engine starts just for an instant and then dies, that usually means you're not getting any fuel uh to the to the injectors and uh you might want to look at the fuel system or should look at the fuel system as as a cause for your concern. So most non-start issues can be um fuel related. Uh they can be electrically related and they can be computer related. Some of the sensors like the crankshaft position sensor might fail, something like that. And uh then uh you know the computer doesn't see a signal for the crankshaft position. Doesn't know when to uh fire the injectors off and and uh and send current to the spark plugs to ignite the air fuel mixture. And so nothing happens.