1994 xjs won't start

Robin, I’m not close to the XJS at this moment, but will try your suggestion and get back to you.

usually washing the engine gets water into the distributor, causing a no start.

My old Jeep CJ7 was notorious for this. The distributor was mounted on the low side of the straight 6, and there was tons of room between it and inside fender. If I drove in heavy water going fast, water would splash up inside and stall the car, would take 15 minutes sitting there for it to start again.

I was going to get a rubber boot for the distributor, but ended up selling the car before I could.

Have you popped distributor cap and checked for any moisture stuck in there?

AJ16, no distributor as such it has coil over plugs. This was a thought that passed through my mind last night in bed, might pay to check that the plug wells haven’t managed to ingest some water.

Ah, good point. If the problem was moisture in the ignition system, you’d expect it to kill one or two cylinders, not the whole engine, right? Unless the water shorted out a sensor somewhere. Or an ECU.

Why else could water cause a no-start situation?

Rich,

Maybe instead of waiting for another hypothesis - you can give us the list of things already checked.
That will bring plenty of speed-up in your topic…

North american 94 MY were equipped with AJ6, so therefore there is a distributor.

Just saying.

Ok I stand to be corrected. In that case yes check the dissy cap.

Robin, I have attempted to start the XJS as you have suggested and observed that for just a moment when I first tried to start it- while flooring the accelerator- the engine seemed to want to start for the initial second or two and then just cranked. I did not smell any fuel vapor and wonder if my problem has been fuel delivery all the time? i do hear the fuel pump running for a few seconds during the initial start sequence, so I am wondering if I have a clogged fuel filter? I do know that I have never changed it out over the 20K miles and three years I have owned and have driven the XJS. I have no idea as to whether the previous owners ever did such.

A clogged fuel filter would develop over time and not cause a complete/sudden ‘no start’ if the car has the AJ6 engine then another problem may be water in the spark plug wells I had that with my old XJ40, same engine. Have you checked to see that they are clear?

Why not use jump start spray? If your ignition system is still working, it will fire up straight away. At least you can exclude anything related to sparks, cables and timing…

I did look into the wells and they were dry. I also replaced the spark plugs at the same time. I have located the fuel filter and it looks quite old as it’s surface is quite soiled. In either case, changing it out is probably a good thing to do. I also checked the fuel rail at the output of the pressure regulator and there is fuel there. I don’t have any wat of checking the fuel pressure at this time but will see if I can work something out. At the moment, I have a Sunday church service to organize so it’ll be a couple days until I can get back to the XJS’s problem.

Sir, I did spray starter fluid into the air intake with the throttle wide open. I then attempted to start the XJS and it ran for a couple seconds and then quit, probably due to no fuel delivery.

It’s a two people job, one spraying, one cranking the engine. It will never start and run on idle if you just spray it into the intake… Anyway - ignition confirmed ok-ish.
Disconnect terminals from fuel pump and hot-wire pump directly to the battery, let it run all the time, make sure you identified positive terminal correctly. Get back and try to start it…

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Just to ask, and I know you said it ran a couple of seconds, did you try a noid light to verify your injectors are getting signal? I may have missed it, but was it mentioned about the crank position sensor?

Richard you said you disconnected the battery before you wash the engine. Did you check the the two wires which are connected to +battery wire have not disconnected as the engine will not start if they have come lose .

Well, nobody mentioned immobiliser YET. Disconnecting battery sounds slightly like it (if fitted)…

The OP said that he had fuel at the rail, so if its cranking and isn’t starting then there must not be any spark. Take the distributor cap off and wipe it, spray WD40 or some such and make sure that it is dry. Check the coil on the fender wall and see if there is spark, and make sure that you are getting spark all the way to the spark plugs.

…aaand that purely explains why he was successful with jump start spray :slight_smile:

CPS mentioned on the beginning, probably not checked until now…

Sir, I haven’t tried that yet, but will and get back with the results.

Sir, thankyou for your suggestions. I will look into both and get back with and results.