Abarth start quality

[minime911]

Hi all,

Anybody else complaining about poor engine start quality or is it a professional deformation from my side?

If I start my Abarth at about 20 deg. C after an overnight soak in my garage it will start with a strange behaviour of increasing engine RPM and rough idle for a while. Ok, I know what they intend to do as it is an emission test start and they want to heat up the converter as fast as possible but the way my car starts is not commercial.
Also engine starts at other temperatures are very bad and not consistent.

This is worth an official complaint to Fiat except if this is only a problem with my car or is there already a reflash in the pipeline??

Greetings:

minime911

[.Lefteris.]

Nop, no problem like this here, but my garage is heated!

[ewandougie]

It could be the car preheating the catalytic converter/

[minime911]

Yes,
It is most probably the converter light off with huge spark retard but usually this must be limited in a way that it shouldn't be annoying.
After the poor start it is shooting up to high RPM (16 to 1800), hanging there and then coming slowly down. This is so bad that sometimes it even stalls or really misfires during the first few seconds.
It's very bad in the range of 20 degrees (heated garage) but also not much better at any other temperature.

My daily work consists of engine calibration and I just see that our customers wouldn't accept such a poor start quality.

I feel that there will be another dealership visit on Monday...

Greetings:

minime911

[Abarth]

Yes, I had starting problems too when I filled it up with that bad 100 ROZ fuel named "V-Power Racing", sold by the Shell station. Now I am driving with 95 ROZ or 98 ROZ fuel by Aral and the engine starts very well again.