97 Sentra, Won't Start, Flooding, Spark OK

[Scuba-4fun]

Hi!

My Daughter has a 97 Sentra 4 cyl. She parked it last night, and in the morning said "Dad, my car won't start".

I looked at it, and am quite handy ...

It has great Spark, and I put in new plugs.

The cylinders were very wet with fuel, even after parking over night, and making sure the flooding was history.

After just 15 seconds of cranking, it smells of flooding, and the pistons will have fuel on the tops of them, as it is getting WAY too much fuel.

Could it be the pressure reulator, or the cooling sensor? How can I test them?

Thanks so very much!
Kind regards,

[NissanTech]

Could it be the pressure regulator, or the cooling sensor? How can I test them?

The fuel pressure regulator will not cause flooding, since the injector has to open to inject the fuel. Usually the flooding is more related to leaking injector, since the spark is OK.

[Scuba-4fun]

Interesting, but when I looked into the cylinders, all four had flooded out badly; I could see fuel laying on top of the pistons. How likely is it that all four injectors would go bad overnight?

Any other ideas? Is it possible to test the injectors, or do you just replace them all?

Thanks so much.

[tech22]

This problem was most likely caused be very short trips and not allowing the engine to run hot enought to exspand the rings.This was a very common problem with the old sentras and altimas with alot of milage on them and it coused the cylinders to wash out.Check to see if you have compression in each cylinder. If not add a couple of drops of oil to help seal the rings. To get it started if you have a air hose just blow out the cylinders, if not pull the fuse to the fuel pump and crank the engine over.Leave the plugs in. After several attemps insert the fuse to see if you can hear the engine trying to start. Keep turning the engine over at the same time pull and insert the fuel pump fuse.You should get it started. Once running give the old girl a good running for atleast 20 min.