2001 Protege LX 1.6 - trouble starting

DLISTER70

MEMBER
2001 MAZDA PROTEGE

The vehicle is a 2001 Mazda Protege LX with a 1.6 engine and 77k miles.

I bought this car when it had 22k miles on it, and I've not done much more than get the oil changed on it. I've changed brakes and tires but that's all I can remember changing.

In the past month or so the car has been giving me problems starting. It will crank but not fire. I usually give it some gas and try again and it will eventually start. Once the car is started, it idles smoothly and drives fine. This is not just from a cold start, but even if I've been driving for an hour and stop at a rest stop and come back out it may still give me problems.

Yesterday I had to crank it for almost 20 seconds to get it to start. I drive probably 500-600 miles per week and I don't want to get stranded!

I replaced the spark plugs since I don't think they'd ever been replaced. They really didn't look bad at all, so I could just be forgetting replacing them another time. Regardless, that didn't fix the problem.

What else can I try?

2 Replies

LEDNEY

MEMBER
4 POSTS

Did you figure out what was happening because I am having the exact same problem!

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Friday, September 21st, 2007 AT 12:55 PM

DLISTER70

MEMBER
2 POSTS

I never did figure out what was causing the problem. But it stopped happening. I haven't had a problem for the last few months, and I'm not doing anything differently now.

It just went away.

I don't see how, but it might have been connected to a problem I was having with my remote start. It seems that the remote start quit working around the same time as I was having trouble getting the car started. Then suddenly one day the remote start worked again. I can't remember now if the car started better the same day. I hadn't really made the connection until just now that both problems were happening around the same time.

Now I don't see why the remote start not working would change the way that the car started when you are using they key. But nothing else changed that I can remember except that the remote start starting working again, and the car starts fine now.

*shrugs*