I just recently bought a '92 Mitsubishi Lancer that has only gone 13600 swedish miles, in pretty good condition (slight rust). It has been working flawlessly for two days driving. Until today.

When driving I felt the telltale metallic smell of burning electronics, and in a panic stopped and turned it off. I went ahead and checked every fuse, and every electronic I could access with a car standing on the side of the road. With caution I turned the ignition on to the first step, so far so good, no smoke, no smell. I then turned the engine on and it worked without problem. No burning electronics there it seemed. So I chucked this up to some sort of external source of the smell, and not coming from my car.

After several times starting the car and turning it off during the day when traveling, I came home. And to fix the C-lock that allows me to unlock all the doors, but not lock them, I removed the control box and the relay that handles this. Fiddled with that for a while, noticed corrosion on the relays connectors, so sorted that out. Put the relay and the control box back.

And then the problems began. When trying to start the car, it fires and throttles (auto choke I assume) for a few second before it dies. I am unable to get it running more than that. What could be wrong? I have so far not been able to find any obvious problem, granted it was late and I had to abort the troubleshooting. But I thought that I should turn to some people on this forum that has bit more experience with mitsubishi models (I have never owned one before, and I am no mechanic, though I know my way around electronics).

Any suggestions what could be the cause?

 

I think its a sensor of some kind.

Either that or its your ECU

 

Ok. Expensive to replace?

 

Sensor no... the ECU potentially.. yes

I would hit up junk yards and ebay.

 

Ok, thanks for the input. Will try to find the problem today in the light of day (hard to do when it is pitch black dark outside ).

 

Having the ECU in my hands, and having a look inside it, it seems fine. Nothing that is burned, which is what you expect when electroncis gives of the smell of burning electronics. So I do not belive it to be the ECU.

Further investigation revealed the following. When we removed the fuel feeding line on the fuel injector to check if the fuelpump worked, and then remounted it. The enginge fired and ran a few seconds longer, as if the air that now was in the system made it work better. I suspected that it for some reason did not get enough air. But I have not been able to find anything specific to explain that.

The car starts, and the engine can run anything from 2 to 15 seconds on idle. It does not like any throttle at all, in which case it instantly dies.

I have not checked the sensors yet, though.

Any suggestions on what might be the problem? (if it is not the sensors)

 

that makes more sence to me.

I would check the fuel filter and the throttle body for carbon deposits. Clean out your throttle body and make sure your fuel filter is clean. Also you might want to check to see if your injectors are in good ondition. One of those might be gone.

 

While checking the air vent on the fuel injection, I found that it seems like the vent (throttle? not sure on the english terminology) does not open much, and it does not close. Sometimes during engine start it does not move at all. I guess that would depend on a sensor. There is a "step engine" that seems to pull the throttle when the ECU controls engine start, and it has some sort of pressure sensor next to it. Removing the connector to that sensor reproduced a behaviour I had yesterday in which the engine did not fire at all and only the start motor turned. Some tinkering later (yesterday) I was back to where it fired but died after a couple of seconds.

I will see if I can get hold on some replacement sensor for the airflow regulator vent, and see if that solves the problem. But I am a bit unsure if it really could be the sensor which is at fault. Mainly because I do not know how much the vent should open, or of it should move at all.

Any suggestions?

 

I dont really understand most of that post. However it does seem like you are on the right track. I say replace it and see if that works.

 

Ok, will try that.

I have yet another question. Another possible source of problem could be the fuel pump or the fuel pump relay. Unfortunately I am unable to find the location of the fuel pump relay. I know that the pump itself are located somewhere around the fuel tank, but I have not a clue to where the fuel pump relay might be located. Any suggestions?