A place for more technical discussions. Please make sure you post in the correct section on the site, this way it keeps the site tidy AND ensures you get a more relevant answer.
Rhys here, nice to meet you all and thank you in advance for your help.
I live in Japan and own the 1986 Jimny Pickup M-JA71C pictured below.
Every now and then if I stall the engine it will not start up again for about 5 minutes. The engine is trying to kick over but just wont fire. As a mentioned after a 5 minute sit it seems to be fine and completely drivable.
Can any of you Jimny pro's out there shed a little light on what the problem might be. This may be a huge nooby question im sure but any help would be greatly appreciated.
Ah, we have a problem - I did not note the date of the vehicle - that is what we call an SJ in Europe, not a Jimny!
This forum largely caters for Jimny from 1998 on.
So your car has a carburettor, not fuel injection like ours and the full throttle advice I gave you will possibly just flood the carb.
You could try it and see if it works but there is a problem with the fuelling system somewhere.
The fuel pump on the SJ's is a lift pump on the end of the camshaft that works by a rubber diaphragm sucking the fuel through as it goes up and down. The diaphragm often wears and being rubber deteriorates with age. I would replace that to start with if you haven't since owning the car as it will fail sooner or later anyway. A sign of the fuel pump failing is the fuel filter being empty where it's allowed to syphon back. I used to have a clear fuel filter in line on mine so could see this.
Have a look at the colour of the spark plugs to get an idea of what the mixture is like after it has been run for a while at normal working temperature. They should be the colour of a nice cup of tea or coffee. If they are whiter it's running lean and if they are blacker it's running rich. Get the mixture right if it's wrong or you'll never get things right.
Hope this helps.
Kirkynut
The underdog often starts the fight, and occasionally the upper dog deserves to win - Edgar Watson Howe.
Thank you very much for taking the time to reply, much appreciated. This morning I will go ahead and check the areas you mentioned and at least I can now let a mechanic now here in my very basic Japanese what the issue may be.
Fingers crossed you've already solved the issue for us!
Going to take a look around the site here and see what others are up to with their cars.
