Hey guys, long time. First of all, apologies in advance for the length of this post, just thought I should provide as much detail as possible. I'm having some starting issues and I guess I'm kind of running out of ideas, so if anyone has any ideas, i'm all ears.
1990 Mirage Cyborg with a 4G63 swap. About a year and a half ago I was daily driving it, I got in the car one day and went to start it, and it just cranked continuously, didn't fire. I sat there for about 10 minutes trying over and over, my battery was going flat and I was just about to phone a tow company, when for some reason I decided to roll the car. So I pushed it backwards a few meters, and tried to start it again, and to my surprise, it fired right up (still can't figure that one out). From memory this exact thing happened again twice, and ever since then, it hasn't started at all, regardless of if I move the car or not. I was kinda over it at that stage, and I have 2 other cars I can drive, so I parked it up where it has sat unloved for the past year or so.
Prior to this happening, I had a different weird starting issue. Often when I started it, it would attempt to fire on like the 1st or 2nd crank, and either immediately die, or sit there struggling at 200 rpm until I kicked the gas. If it died, the second time starting it would be more difficult, it'd crank over for about 5-7 seconds before it actually started, as if it was flooded? From memory the car was doing this for over a year. It never seemed to get any worse during that time, just randomly happened sometimes and other times it'd start fine.
I'm not sure if the two problems are related, but I thought i'd put them both out there.
Now I've decided I miss driving it, so I wanna get it up and running again. Back in 2009, I did an engine bay wire tuck. I decided to start there, so I pulled the harness out and went over it. I found that the CAS wiring didn't look the best (didn't have a soldering iron at the time when I did the wire tuck so I crimped the connections), a couple of the wires were sitting loosely in the crimps, barely connected. So I pulled all the crimps off and properly soldered the wires together. The rest of the harness looked fine. At this stage I was pretty sure I'd solved the problem, so I went and put the harness back in the car, turned the key, and the same thing happened, just cranks over and over.
I pulled the spark plugs out to check if I'd flooded it. Nope, dry as a bone. Checked the ECU for leaking caps, all seemed fine, no visible leaks, no fishy smell. The car is getting spark. The MPI relay clicks when I turn the key, but I have no idea how to properly test it (might just see if I can find a 2nd hand one to try, but from what I've heard, if it's clicking it should be working?). I ran out of daylight, but next on the list is to remove the fuel line at the rail inlet and give it a quick crank to make sure fuel is getting to the rail? I'm electrically retarded, I own a volt meter but I don't really know how to use it. What should I be testing? I'm guessing if the fuel is making it to the rail, I should be testing the injectors, if it's not getting to the rail, I should be testing the fuel pump?
I just remembered, about 7-8 months ago I did attempt to start the car, and it actually did fire, but died immediately. It hasn't fired since. Is there anything obvious or simple that I'm overlooking? What should I do from here?
Thanks in advance
Edit: Another thing I just remembered. Every time I go to start it, I get the rapid clicking that you get when you have a flat battery, only for about half a second, and then it proceeds to crank over like normal. This is with a brand new battery. I might actually try hooking it up to another running car and jumping it, but like I said, it cranks over fine. Can this be a sign of something more sinister though? Bad earth maybe, poor power feed to battery? Anything at all that would cause the car to not fire??