Hey guys,

First time ive had my truck in 30 below zero. I live up here in Fairbanks Alaska. I have a block heater and a battery blanket to keep things functional. The problem I am having with my 94 SR5 pickup (V6,4x4,stick); when I try to start up the truck after sitting all night (plugged in to stay warm), the truck will turn over great, but it will not fire very well. It will turn over for a long time with no luck. So ill stop cranking. Then on the next try it will sputter like it wants to start and then die out. Does this about 5 to 6 times, then it eventually fires up to a high idle (lots of smoke). After the truck has been warmed up from this long sit, there is no problem. I have brought it in to the Toyota Stealership and they did a fuel pressure check. Said it was ok. They mentioned it could be a bad check valve in the fuel pump? Now I was thinking more along the lines of leaky injector or leaky cold start injector, which, overnight would flood with fuel and cause my problem. I checked the resistance through the CSI, and it reads normal. I cant seem to find the Cold Start Time Switch, but Toyota didnt think that was the problem. I get no check engine light at startup, indicating a problem, but it is getting bad. I was thinking about running some injector cleaner through it once to see if I can get lucky with a cheap fix, but any suggestions or ideas would be great. Thanks

 

At those temps, one of the first things I would try is some gasline anti-freeze. And keep the tank as full as possible, less room in the tank for condensation to form, thus less water in the tank to freeze.

 

I put Heat in the fuel a few times a month to keep the water out, but here in Fairbanks, we have almost 0% humidity, it is a very dry climate. My old Toy would fire up all day long no matter what temp it was here. Now I get a new one and the thing takes 10 minutes of sputtering to finally run. I dont have a shop up here so its hard to work on it in -30F. When I brought the truck to Toyota, I brought it warm, so they could not get my sputtering problem to occur. I might drop it off at night so that they can actually experience my problem first hand. Maybe this will help them to find the problem??

 

The csi time switch is on the back of the engine. Sorta down and a little under the rear of the intake plenum. sounds kinda like a prob I had last winter, turned out to be the reed valve and a vsv not functioning properly in the cold.

 

MY suggestion is move SOUTH! Man, -30 is cold! It was 60 here today yet I can see snowcapped mountains from my house. I love Oregon.

 

i just had the same issue on my 99 2.7, except mine sputtered when i tried to accelerate, i just finished replacing the whole exhaust, and put in higher grade fuel, new preformance plugs and wires from napa and it solved the problem. In ur situation im assuming it would prb have something to do with the BTU factor in gasoline, being so cold and then warming up running normal with heat in the engine, im not sure, this is the 3rd incident ive heard so far