Hi guys. Increasingly over the last few weeks the TJII has been taking longer to start than usual. It was always virtually instant, like half a crank and vroom, nowadays it will crank 5,6,7 times before the vroom. Car has new battery, newish dizzy/coil/cap/button, new filter, newish (but sh*t brand - see below) HT leads, MAF replaced earlier this year. About to replace spark plugs, while I've got the plenum off is there anything else that I should be checking that could be behind this?

Also, in searching the forums there appears to be some conflicting stories about leads and which are best. The most common advice was to stick with the original leads, however when I bought the TJ it already had TopGuns fitted so the originals are long gone and earlier this year I replaced the leads with another set of TGs, in my ignorance. The next best advice seems to be to use OEM (presumably Denso), Bosch or NGK. So, what do you guys recommend? Happy to go OEM if they are available and not double the price of something else that is equally good.

It it starts and runs smoothly, my gut feeling is that it is not the leads - happy to be corrected.

I expect you're correct, the leads is kinda a separate question. I'll be replacing them anyway since the general consensus seems to be that TopGun are useless.

I got NGK leads on mine. No problems at all with them.

You say you changed a filter, is that the fuel filter? Once when I changed mine the engine had trouble starting. Turns out it had a slight leak and would loose all the pressure in the fuel line when turned off overnight. Tightening the connection fixed the problem.

If you wait a second with the ignition on before hitting start, does it take less cranking to get it started?
If it is the situation as suggested above the extra time priming the pump should make a difference.

It could be that your FPR has gone bad and your low on fuel pressure.
Could be the timing is out. Advanced timing makes for hard starting. Not sure how easy it is to have the timing wrong in these cars though. I might be totally wrong on that.

How rapidly has this developed? Days, weeks, months?
Did you do anything to the car, or have another problem occur at the same time as the slow starting?

Air filter is a couple of weeks old, fuel filter was changed earlier this year and doesn't seem to be leaking but I'll check everything is tight and dry. Tlmitf, I'll try the ign-pause-start thing and see if there's any difference. It's difficult to say how long this has been developing, the battery died a few weeks ago but in the weeks leading up to the failure the starter was a bit slow in cranking, so it wasn't obvious that there was any delay in firing (or to be more accurate, I put the delay down to the battery being on the way out). Now that the battery is new and the motor cranks quickly, the delay in ignition is more obvious. I know that cactus sparkers can cause slow starting and I'll be replacing them asap, I just thought I'd check with members if there's any other regular culprits for slow starting that I can check while the plenum's off. Replacing the battery is the only thing done to the car in recent weeks, cleaned out the throttle body a couple of months back but this didn't seem to have any adverse effect on starting. I guess at this stage I'll replace the leads, sparkers and check everything else I can think of and go from there, thanks for the tips (also re the NGK leads, jimbo).

http://www.aussiemagna.com/forums/showthread.php?t=100970&highlight=