is it possible to flood a car with fuel injection.
Is it possible for a fuel injected car to get flooded? Yes though its mostly if something is malfunctioning.
Is it possible for you to flood it? Not really. The computer controls the amount of gasoline that gets shot into the cylinders. All you do when you manipulate the “gas” pedal is move a throttle position sensor and let more air into the intake.
Leaky fuel injectors will flood an engine and make hot starts difficult until you learn to hold the throttle open… Few factory first quality injectors will do this, but some “secondary market” injectors will…
This could easily happen with an older car with single port fuel injection if you pushed on the gas pedal when starting instead of leaving your foot off as was the right thing to do. If this happened, it was an easy matter to remove the wire from the fuel injector and then run the starter until the engine would clear itself, start and then quickly stop. Then the fuel injector would be reconnected and the engine restarted normally.
This would not be so easy with one injector per cylinder if newer engines can be flooded; I have not encountered it.
I managed to do it once. I got the bright idea while doing an oil change to disconnect the spark plugs and crank the engine a little to circulate the oil. The next morning, it wouldn’t start, but as soon as it was towed to the dealership, it started right up.
As long as you don’t do anything as stupid as what I did, and as long as you don’t press on the gas pedal when you start the car, it would be pretty hard to do.
It’s possible, but is nearly impossible to do under normal circumstances, and if it does happen, it is usually an indicator that there is something wrong with the car, leaky fuel injectors, leaky fuel pressure regulator, maintenance severely neglected, out of tune, etc.
Not normally. If you suspect it’s flooded, WITH THE ENGINE NOT CRANKING - HOLD the pedal to the floor and crank it until it starts. This is how you clear the flooded engine. Just to be thorough, PRESS AND HOLD it to the floor BEFORE YOU CRANK THE ENGINE. Otherwise it will just put more fuel into the intake stream. Wide open throttle during starting produces no injector pulses.
I have a car with about 300,000 miles on it, and while it isn’t at all hard to start, its starting may not be as effortless as when it was new. At times, when I stop cranking the engine before it’s started, it will thereafter be difficult to start. Cranking at wide open throttle takes care of the situation.
It seems to me that the improper shutdown may cause fuel to be injected perhaps one time more than it should be, and then when I start cranking again and more fuel is injected, it’s too much and difficult starting ensues. The few times I’ve stalled it with the clutch, another type of improper shutdown, I noticed the same problem.
This is a 99 Cavalier with sequential fuel injection, with all original fuel injectors and no problems starting at times other than those described. I don’t know if the condition is flooding, but it is occasionally a minor inconvenience. The improper shutdown I refer to means stopping the engine in some way other than turning the key, which, I assume, leads to a cessation of fuel delivery in a fuel injected vehicle.
There’s no need to remove the wire. All Fuel Injected cars that I know of (throttle body or ported) have a clear flood mode. Just hold the gas pedal all the way to the floor and crank the engine. The injector(s) are disabled while you do this.