Okay here's the deal it's winter now in Michigan and my IROC project has been put to sleep for the winter. I am forced until spring to drive my family ride a 89 Buick Park Avenue to work every day while my wife sits patiently at home until I get there. When I was looking for an IROC I had a moment of weakness and bought a little ragged on 89 V-6 RS. I looks nice but it's rotting out around the wheel wells and has a hole growing in the Drivers side floorboard. I've fixed the floorboard temporily and will be working on some underside rust repair...BUT It will not start in cold weather. It will start if I lay in the gas and stay in it until it warms up where it runs great from there on. I was told that there is only 20000 miles on the motor and since that owner had it that it had always run cold. It doesn't turn any code except a MAF sensor code because I has disconnected it while trouble shooting. I cleaned the throttle body and intake and the spark plugs look good as well as the wiring. This car is 5 speed so it will do great for the winter if I can get some of the quirks out I might do an engine swap come summer for giggles. Its cool because it has the 92 rear wing and T-Tops is black too. It's like my IROC's mini me so I want to bring this thing back to life. By the way I have a 86 Camaro also with a 2.8 that runs great except for a power steering leak and some rust that I can swap parts with. Any ideas where to start?

 

Try swapping out the ignitor.

 

def sounds like an ignition problem.

i don't know if this makes sense, but i recently installed NGK plugs on my 3.8 and on the packaging it said something to the effect of: "Resistor type for lower voltage requirement during cold starts." They test at 4.2 kohms as opposed to my stock platinum tipped ones which tested ~1.8 kohms.

so the cheapest thing to try is to replace your spark plugs with ones with a slightly higher resistance since they will require less voltage to operate.

good luck.

 

Sounds like a weekend project. Maybe I'll just change everything out this weekend. I would love for this car to run worth a damn. I tried starting the other day and the battery is toast. I just hate Michigan weather when you want to work on your car. I wish someone bought me a garage heater for Christmas

I'll keep everyone posted on the parts that get changed.