Started the car this morning to leave home and it started as normal but when I have it the usual few blips to 2500 before letting it settle I had to get out the car to run back in to the house and noticed some blue mixed in with the usual water vapour.

Now, over the last week or so the cars been really stuttery when cold. Normally pulling out my estate it had a slighty errr moment around 2500-2800rpm I thought was just a flat spot when cold as it just felt like the car wasnt pulling as well through that range. But for the last week or so its really been stuttering, running out of fuel style spluttering and just fighting not to pull anything over 2000ish for the first couple of minutes of driving.

It had new plugs, rotorcap, distributor and fuel filter under 1000 miles ago. What could be wrong with it now?

the blue is probably oil leaking past the valve stem oil seals.
the cold start injector is fairly easy to remove, its (on the 165/185) poking up through the bottom of the throttle body and "simply unbolts". give it a good clean, i cleaned mine with degreaser last year and have had no problems.

these are the little rubber beauties that leak oil from the head down onto the valve.

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Sprint ST165 aka "The 500BHP Sledgehammer" #6 in the Toyota Sprint Series. GT3071 1.9bar

Its a ST205 so no cold start injector afaik?

Another thing I've noticed is she has a tendancy to sit with the A/F at about 10.x : 1 until the tempgauge is a good half a centimeter up the scale, is this normal?

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02 Mini Cooper Race Car
94 ST205 Import
92 ST185 Carlos Sainz
www.mcnab-racing.co.uk

that sounds about right. its running rich whilst cold which is how things should be.

i cant really be of much help because the only work ive done on a ST205 is fit a dumpvalve for nigel :/

Hmmmmm,

Sounds a little odd. Just for piece of mind I'd run a quick compression test on it.....

On mine using the stock (pants) O2 sensor I see it run ~10.5:1 AFR until the temp gauge has just started to move off the bottom temp line. This sounds a little lower than yours - but then the tolerance for temp gauge and O2 errors is high

Do you have the BGB for the 205? If so there's a routine for checking out the state of the ECU temp sender (it has a different one to the Temp guage so just because this reads right doesn't mean the ECU is seeing it)

Agree with the above, there is no CSI for the 205, this is only present on the 165 and 185.

The AFR seems a little rich, but the car always runs rich wne it is cold.

As Steve has suggeted the ECU water temp sender might be a good candidate to check?

Andy - good pic!

Hopefully the valve stem oil seals are not badly worn and leaking oil, but it could be a possibility? This may also affect your start up. The comments regarding blue smoke does go some way to confirm the seals.

Has the engine been rebuilt recently? The reason I mention this is that the inlet and exhaust valve stem oil seals are of a different size...

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Kris
95 ST205 - slept for 10 years, now waking up...
Avensis
http://www.gtfours.co.uk
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Turbocharging - the replacement for displacement

The engine is utterly unopened, hasnt been touched. The cold start AF sits about 10.5/10.4 usually, so that sounds normal now I've heard steve's does it as well.

It could be my imagination but I think it is slightly hesitant under boost as well. Was driving back from town and on a 4th gear pull it seemed to have a couple of flat spots/lumps between 3-4000 rpm.

Are the spark plugs gapped correctly?

Andy- May i suggest you change the oil a little more often?

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Steve Gillies
ST-165 88 UK

www.GT4-Play.co.uk

lol betsy
thats a 185 head which ive stripped ready for an oversize valve rebuild

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Sprint ST165 aka "The 500BHP Sledgehammer" #6 in the Toyota Sprint Series. GT3071 1.9bar

0.8mm gap iirc. Platinium NGK's from Fensport. The car ran beautifully when the plugs had just been changed and continued to do so for 3 weeks after the change. Its only this week she's started acting up.

Stock heat range?

Midrange "reluctance" can only be one of two things - spark problems or timing problems. Sounds like you've got the spark side covered bar a new set of leads. Which would just possibly leave a cold grade plug fouling a little but only if you went colder than stock

I have a similar midrange hiccup which is not severe enough to be a misfire but is there. I believe this is due to a duff knock sensor that's taken me 9 months (and counting :lol ) to fix. It could be something similar on yours?

What oil? That thing must have been running on tar

blame daemonic

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Sprint ST165 aka "The 500BHP Sledgehammer" #6 in the Toyota Sprint Series. GT3071 1.9bar

Could be, I just went for stock heat range as I only run 1 bar max. I guess it only makes sense to do the leads then see if the problem persists. That'll be another afternoons labour and £60 this car owes me

Seriously, never a truer word was spoken than christening these things faffs, my CS has double the mileage and never gave me a moments hassle.