Car is getting harder to start.

[dds78910]

I know I need to change my valve seals, cause the car smokes on start up and when it comes off vacuum. I haven't done a compression test yet. But when I try to start the car it seems to crank for a long time before it starts. I put new plugs in, but that didn't seem to help. Any thoughts?

[milesengineer]

What is the fuel pressure doing? Last filter change?

How did the old plugs look?

[Turbo3Iroc]

Your battery could be getting weak or your starter could be going bad. Do you have a heat shield on it?

[dds78910]

What is the fuel pressure doing? Last filter change?
How did the old plugs look?

I havent changed the fuel filter, I need to do that. The old plugs were brown with oil on one side of the plug.

Your battery could be getting weak or your starter could be going bad. Do you have a heat shield on it?

The starter seems ok, it cranks good. It seems to just take longer to start.

[milesengineer]

mine throws fits everyonce in a while and when it does i look at the fuel pressure gauge and it is slow to rise. once it hits 40 or so the engine will fire.

[440dart]

mine also had this problem, put a fuel pressure gauge on it and was slow to rise put a new filter on and good to go

[RoadWarrior222]

Filter will cause hard starting, service schedule on them was 24/36,000 I believe, but latest generally available crap seems to need changing yearly.

[dds78910]

I changed the the filter and it seems to be better. I was worried it was worse since the car is smoking at times.

[RoadWarrior222]

Thing with that though is you're cranking and putting not quite enough airborne fuel in, due to pressure drop, but there's a lot sloshing round in the cylinder due to not atomising on a cold motor, and it gets past the rings and then your oil goes thin... so oil change it now and see if smoking decreases.