2013 Scion FR-S cranks but no start!!!
 

Hello everyone purchased a 2013 Scion FR-S AUTOMATIC recently. It had a spun bearing. I disassembled the engine and turned out crank was bad also. Ended up putting new crank bearings etc. Everything oem spec no modifications. The engine cranks but won’t start. I’ve compression checked all cylinders (all right at 150psi) I’ve checked for spark on each coil and spark plug, all checks out. Originally when I first assembled everything I had the direct injector rail off. when reinstalling rail didn’t have all seals on it so injectors leaked(one sign I knew my cylinders were getting fuel) That and all my spark plugs were wet when I pulled them to inspect . Obviously I put all brand new seals and no leak now. I’ve checked the crank positioning sensor and it works. 110% sure I’ve installed the timing chain correctly and have everything lined up correctly. Ive been reading into all types of forums and different situations. I installed trigger plate correctly so can rule that out. The car is throwing no codes except p1604 which is startability malfunction. Obviously throwing that cause car won’t start haha I’m at the point I’m just trying to figure out where else to check. Any advice anyone?? Before anyone asks yes I’ve checked all fuses, I’ve checked battery voltage, had my truck hooked up to to jump it. Starter fluid the whole 9. Just kind of stumped. I wanna take it to a dealer but hell as deep as I’ve looked into the car I’m afraid my diagnostic bill will be insane. I will see if I can post video of the crank onto this post. I’m new to forums so I really don’t know how to work this haha anyways, any advice will be helpful.

If it does not even start/pop with starting fluid and you have spark and fuel then you are down to valve timing. Probably 360 off?

When I spray with start fluid just backfires. How would I go about checking valve timing? And 360 off?

I guess one thing I didn’t mention. When installing the engine I broke a vvt solenoid. I didn’t get it replaced. Would that maybe have something to do with my timing being off?

I know you say your positive your timing chain was installed correct, however there had to be a mistake in assembly/installation somewhere. VVT is only going to change valve timing a little, it more sounds like you my be sparking on top dead center exhaust stroke. Just a thought.

I followed this guide when installing the timing chain. https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/20...87902-5448.pdf

All my colors on timing chain lined up with all timing marks. Is it possible it was still installed incorrectly? I figured it was very straight forward but Maybe something I missed

Are you absolutely sure you installed the VVT controllers back in the same place they came from? They are not interchangeable and are specific to the side and intake / exhaust orientation.

No I broke the sensor tab on my vvt controllers. I bought new ones.... do I have to like reprogram them or!? Broke both on right side of the engine. They got caught on that dang little tab

Not sure I was not there when it was assembled. What you are describing sounds like it could be valves or spark is not happening at the correct time. This is all 1000 mile speculation. At this point you are going to have to go on an exploratory mission to find the issue. this could end up with a engine disassembly. Start simple work your way to the difficult issues.

I’m definitely seeing it could be valve or timing related issue. I’ve disassembled this engine twice. Inspected heads and all. I’m just curious because I followed the guide in the link above to the absolute T and spun crank never jumped a tooth or anything. Now I’m wondering if the vvt solenoid being broke has anything to with it. I didn’t notice it at first and I attempted to crank motor with broke vvt so I have a feeling maybe that could of thrown something outta place...

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think your oil control solenoids are energized during cranking. I remember reading somewhere that there is either a time or temperature-based delay that must occur before they are allowed to energize.

There is definitely some kind of relay that gets stuck open and buzzes if you have bad start because low voltage and/or temperature. It was happening to me before I replaced my battery. I replaced mine at about 40k too but it was more like 4 years rather than 2...


OOPS sorry I think I mixed this up with another thread. [emoji849][emoji28]


Sent from my SM-G975U using Tapatalk

Man this thing is gonna beat me. I’ve done everything I can think. The timing is not off, the compression reads good numbers, it’s getting fuel, it’s getting spark, I’ve checked cam sensors, crank sensor, no codes, all grounds secure, all fuses good, trigger wheel facing correct way, and battery is good. Is there anything anyone thinks I can check?? If it helps any I can post a video of me cranking it. One thing I notice when it’s cranking is it sounds like it’s misfiring and the injectors on my intake manifold have been leaking slightly now (wasn’t doing this before)

The car need a manifold pressure drop detected to start. look at manifood pressure when ignition on it should bead 14 psi or 1 bar or 100kpa, when cranking this should drop. if itdoesnt car wont start, if map sensor manifold pressure is bad or not stock it wont start.


check the di computer on side of engine has all three mount bolts in and tight or won't start or run or run badly.


Im assuming your runnog stock tune and engine jas stock injectors and map sensor fitted.


Also try unpligging the Mass air flow sensor this is the on on intake near air filter ( not the map sensor on intake manifold) with maf sensor unplugged see if engine starts. unplugging tgis sensor forces the ecu into a very basic limp mode.

So i tried unplugging maf sensor, got nothing. The ecu is well grounded. How do I check map sensor pressure? I’ve looked at a few ways to do it. Wasn’t sure if there was specific way on these cars. Once again one thing I get when cranking engine is it’ll backfire. I’m assuming maybe cause there being fuel and spark but car not starting

This really sounds like a timing issue when you’re getting backfire (through the intake?), like when a carbureted engine shoots flames out the carburetor when the timing is off by 360 degrees.

Are you certain that you have the coil packs wired correctly on each side of the engine and not have them reversed? You can swap the connectors between each set of coils on each side to test this.

Right! It does sound out of time but it’s all timed correctly followed the guide I mentioned. All my timing marks align correctly. I spun crank a bunch of times and my marks always align correctly never got off. As far as the coil packs I can try to swap them around but it seems the way my wiring harness comes down it’s almost not possible to put them
In the wrong spot hahah anyways when I checked for spark I checked each coil pack and spark plug. Every single one of them was sparking when cranked and had metal touching it. Unless there’s a such thing as weak spark? I’m not sure at this rate

Okay we’re going to figure this out, but first let’s back up a bit. Answer these questions for me:

You said you purchased this ‘13 FR-S. Are you the original owner from day one, or did you purchase it used from a dealer, auction, wrecking yard, private seller, etc.? Please specify where.

I bought the car from a girl I was seeing. The car spun a bearing (I have experience building engines) I’ve built k series Honda, vq35de and various other imports). When I disassembled engine the bearing scarred up crank so bad I ordered new crankshaft, bearings, head studs, gaskets, and etc. machine shop checked block and pistons for me. I assembled engine etc etc. compression tested engine and everything turned up good. Car throws no codes. It cranks strong sounds like it’s about to start but never does

I'm not doubting your skills at engine building or anything like that, I'm just trying to gather some information, and sometimes you have to think outside of the box. It's what I do in order to solve problems. No extraneous answers needed. Just bear with me for a bit.

You bought it from someone that you knew, got it. Did you ever get to drive it or ride in it while she owned it?

Were you the one that was driving it when the engine spun the bearing, or was she the one, or did you purchase the car from her as a project because it wasn't running?

And not meaning to get personal here, (remember I'm just gathering information) are you and her still seeing each other and if not, are you two still on good terms?

Of course man! Just giving you some background on myself! Haha but yes the car was regularly maintained. I’ve rode with her few times the car was daily. Mainly highway miles. Car wasn’t dogged out. She got an oil change and then she was driving car started knocking and it was towed to dealership. They started it snd it was knocking told her needed engine replaced. Was out of her budget I then acquired car from her. Before this the car ran very good never had any issues that anyone was aware of. We are still on good terms

ok posdibly somthing mechanicall then

Okay, so we can safely say that it was completely stock when the engine developed the knock and that it did not have any modifications made to it, and then returned to stock before it was sold to you and that it does not have an aftermarket tune, and it wasn’t sold to you by a jaded ex-girlfriend who decided to sabotage the fuel system before selling her car to you, and who doesn’t also have a new beau who hates you who may have decided to sabotage it himself knowing that be can never be half the man her ex was. Got it.

How long was the car sitting before you finally got it up and ready to start? Just thinking that possibly your fuel may have gone bad or has been contaminated or maybe something has plugged up the injectors.

Are you sure you have the fuel lines connected in the engine bay properly (you don’t have the return line connected to the supply line and vice versa)? Perhaps it’s time for you to figure out how to start posting pictures here to give us some references to look at.

Hahaha yeah this car has never seen a tune for sure! She’s original owner too! See I thought that possibly the fuel could be bad but wasn’t sure. It’s sat for 4 months, but I did add like 2 gallons of fuel. Had a quarter tank in it. Is it possible fuel could be bad? I thought it was possible they were backwards but after looking at many pictures of other engine bays and pictures I took of mine before disassemble. It’s all been installed correctly

Okay, so fuel lines are correct but you're not sure if the fuel that was in the tank was still good. Normally, four months would be okay as long as your tank and lines were sealed and slightly pressurized so that air cannot infiltrate into the system and the fuel can't evaporate out.

This is a stupid question: Did you prime the pump before trying to crank the engine?

Here's my suggestion before you go any further: Disconnect your supply line in the engine bay and pump out what you can into a fuel container and set that aside. Then add a few gallons of fresh premium fuel, prime the pump by turning the key to the ON position then back to OFF about 10 times and then try starting again.

Did you ever try swapping the low voltage sides of your ignition coils?

How about your injector connectors, could they be accidentally swapped causing them to inject at the incorrect times?

What gets me is that when you try spraying starting fluid in the intake, it doesn't even fire then, and you say you have good compression. If you have fuel, air, compression and spark then you should get an explosion. That's the four main requirements right there. It still sounds to me like your ignition timing is off as If you're firing on the exhaust stroke.

That is were I am at also. You should be able to get it run for a couple of seconds.
Op states he is positive he has fuel, Spark, Valve timing is correct. He has everything needed to run. there has to be something happening at the wrong time. I don’t remember when I did my flywheel but can you get that on 180 out?

Okay so tell me what y’all think. I took my air intake off the car and sprayed starter fluid at throttle body. Had my girlfriend crank the car and it literally shot fire straight out! Super wild! So I got to thinking is there anyway possible I put the heads on backwards??? Would that even work?? I followed this guide to the absolute T! https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/20...87902-5448.pdf Not once, not twice, but three times! I know there is no way in hell I installed it incorrectly unless I’m 360 out some how... but how would I even know I was 360 out?? I did timing and cranked the crank a million times never once got outta line or anything. So honestly could I have put the heads on wrong? Is that even possible?? Or am I just tripping?? What’s y’all’s input....

Well, you wouldn’t ever be able to install the heads backwards seeing how your cam sprockets need to be towards the front of the engine, but I suppose it MIGHT be possible to swap the heads from passenger’s side to driver’s side, but I highly doubt that Subaru would engineer that possibility into the design. I.E. the bolt patterns simply wouldn’t allow for that to be possible and you would be using the intake ports as exhaust ports and vice versa. You probably wouldn’t even be able to bolt the intake and exhaust manifolds on in that case. Someone with experience pulling these engines and heads here should be able to verify this as I have not had to do this personally.

You’re getting flames shooting out the intake like it’s trying to fire on the exhaust stroke. That’s the classic symptom with a distributor-style ignition system when the distributor is rotated 180 degrees out of sync or the wires are connected to the cap in the wrong order. Perhaps you’ve got your intake and exhaust cam sensors swapped? I’m running out of ideas.

Yeah good point it’s very impossible because the way the bolts on head are lined up haha anyways. I just wish that I was the guy that installed his timing chain incorrectly and is swearing he did it right so I could have this figured out😭😭
I’m definitely pretty stumped 🤦🏽*♂️

I did find this little article here:
https://www.armstrongfamilyblog.com/...relation-p0018
mentioning having to replace the ECU after certain cam sprocket repairs, but we all know that these ECU's can be reflashed to an updated cal ID so that would save you from having to buy a new ECU. The only thing with this article is that it doesn't mention the problem of not starting or running, only running poorly and idling rough.

Do you have any tuning suites or logging programs so that you can post some logging data during cranking that might give some of our other experts here an idea of what might be going on?

That is a very interesting article. As you said it doesn’t mention anything about the car not running... I’d say the only thing that might be different in my situation is I broke both intake and exhaust Ocv on driver side of engine. Not sure Thatd make a difference but there’s that. Unfortunately I have no type of tuning softwares. I’m almost considering it.

I've actually replaced all four of my OCV solenoids as I found that one of them was leaking oil out from the connector terminals. There are different versions of these solenoids depending upon year of the vehicle and some have been upgraded to address the oil leaking issues. Different existing part numbers are replaced with different new part numbers. There is TSB from Subaru on this which you can Google that has a chart to help identify the old part numbers and subsequent replacement part numbers for each of the identified groups of model years.

However, I need to tell you that when replaced mine with the updated parts, I was not required to do anything different in the way of programming in a different CAL ID ROM. The new oil control valve solenoids just worked out of the box.

When you broke them, could you have possibly shorted out the harness side of the plug pins possibly doing damage to the ECU or hopefully just confusing it? If you suspect that might be the case, what you could try first is to disconnect the negative cable from your battery and then short that negative cable to the positive terminal to drain any static voltage that may remain, then reconnect the negative terminal to the battery and try starting it again. This may help to reset the ECU and possibly get it firing in the proper sequence again. This may not help, but it won't hurt to try.

As for logging, there are several choices available. Personally, since I'm doing all of my flashing at home and getting remote tuning done, I'm using EcuTek to log, but this requires a substantial investment.

is it possible the dowel fell out and you installed the reluctor wheel in the wrong orientation? That would cause the engine to fire at the wrong time.

I can definitely give it a shot. Unfortunately im at a shit point in my life and can’t afford to get it at this moment. I’ll definitely get it figured out soon haha

The reluctor wheel is definitely in right position. As far as dowel.... not 100% sure if there was one in there! But gosh it’s been awhile since I’ve had engine out. I know I had the dot on flywheel lined up with the dowel and stuff for sure... would reluctor wheel spin freely if it wasn’t in there?

the dowel is just there to keep it aligned until the flex plate/flywheel is bolted up. But, if the dowel is missing it could have moved while you were installing the flex plate.

Crap man, it’s been so long since I’ve had the engine out. I’m honestly debating on pulling it to make sure I lined it up correctly. I honestly feel like I installed it correctly. I paid extreme attention to detail and lining everything up seems very straight forward like you almost can’t mess it up unless you’re not paying attention but I’m running out of options 😪

Found out the issue guys....