Why wont my car start?

Tiny
SCOTTJOSH84
  • MEMBER
  • 2002 HYUNDAI ELANTRA
  • 126,000 MILES
It has strong fuel and new plugs and wires and coil. Also, now its spraying coolant out of reservoir. Help Please! The car has always ran decent for what it is. One day getting off of an exit ramp it stalls. And would not start back up. My girlfriend had it towed to my house where I started this puzzle. The car was dropped at the house and started right up but was running rough. Slow pedal depressions would have a semi normal rpm rate. If the pedal was quickly depressed it would bog pretty good until it reached a higher rpm. Like it had to catch up. I put it in drive to put a load on the engine. With one foot on the gas and the other on the brake id give it a little gas and it would sound like a lawnmower(missing horribly)and it had no power. First I thought it was a fuel problem so I checked the pressure and it was normal. So after eliminating that I started thinking it was air. Cleaned sensors and made sure nothing was clogged. All the while no codes have been thrown but I know the bulbs good because it comes on when its in acc position. Checked the coil and it was strong and in sequence. Checked plugs and wires. Both were shot replaced and it started and ran okay. Next day on the way to school she said it was getting hot. So I told her to blast the heat to try and bring it down but it was blowing cold air. After not being able to get the temp down she had it towed again. Got it to the house and topped off coolant and let it heat up. At idle it was sitting at a normal position but blowing cold still. On the test drive got about 200 yards from the house and the temp went shooting up and it started blowing hot. Got back under the hood and was feeling hoses and noticed that the exit hose on the heater core was cold and all others were boiling hot. Thought maybe the heater core was clogged. Reverse flushed and re-assembled. Put coolant back in it went to start and it wouldn't start. Tried to start and it was blowing coolant out of reservoir. It made a weird grinding sound coming from the radiator sporadically as I tried to start it. Could not get it started and now im stumped. Any thoughts will help.
Thursday, October 13th, 2011 AT 2:07 AM

1 Reply

Tiny
KASEKENNY
  • MECHANIC
  • 18,907 POSTS
We need to start at the basics. This means we need to start with checking fuel, spark, and compression.

More than likely this will point us in the right direction.

Here is a guide that gets us started on this issue:

https://youtu.be/dCjmRL3p4Cs

First thing to do is check fuel pressure and use starter fluid in the intake and see if it starts.

https://www.2carpros.com/articles/how-to-check-fuel-system-pressure-and-regulator

Once we know what the fuel pressure is we can move onto spark.

Pull a spark plug and hold it against the block and crank the engine. See if you have a blue spark.

Last we need to check the compression. Here is a guide that will help with this as well:

https://www.2carpros.com/articles/how-to-test-engine-compression

Once we know all this info we can take next steps. Let us know what you find. Thanks
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Thursday, September 9th, 2021 AT 7:05 PM

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