1992 88 won't start on really cold days.

I have a 1992 Olds 88 that I have had for two years. The cars runs and starts perfectly all year long until winter comes and the days get very cold. When it is really cold, sure the car turns over a little slower but it keeps turning over but doesn't start. I can jump the car and/or put the battery on a booster charger and it still won't start. I have to wait until the temperature gets up to about 20 degrees above zero and then the car starts and runs perfectly. Wet weather doesn't bother the car and this is the second winter that the car has had this problem. Once spring came after the first winter, the car started fine until just recently when it got very cold again. What could possibly be only temperature sensitive? Please help.

When this happens do you have good strong spark at the plugs, how about fuel pressure, will it start spraying starting fluid into the intake? All basic diagnostic steps.

All of the basics have been covered! I have been reading about a "cold weather" circuit for fuel injected cars. Does anyone have information on this?

Ok you say it starts spraying starting fluid ino the intake which indicates a fuel delivery problem. If so it needs to be scanned to look at coolant temp and intake air temp readings when cold.

I had a similar problem with my 1988 Delta 88. It started when temp got down to about 0F, and then got slowly worse until it would not start or start hard at anything less than freezing. I changed many things, but it turned out to be the ignition coil (set of three in one block on my engine). I measured the resistance of the coil and found it was high on two of the three coils when cold, and then went down to about 1/3 that value when the engine warmed up. The worst coil was measuring about 47K ohms cold, while the best was 16K. The new coils all measured at 8.5K at room temperature, and 8K at about 25 F. There must have been a poor connection in the coil which was opening up when cold.

So I would check your coil resistance when it is cold, then remove it and bring it inside and see what happens. The coil is kind of expensive, so I would be sure it is bad before you replace it.

Ron

That is exactly why the question about whether there was strong spark during the no start event was asked, as you see there has been no reply so we do not know whether this was resolved.