Hi everyone. I've been searching the posts and I just wanted to check if I'm on the right track. Once last winter, on a very cold and windy day, I parked my 2001 Blazer facing into the wind and the engine compartment on the driver's side got completely packed with snow. So it didn't start until I got it towed into a warm garage and let the snow melt. Then it started up no problem.

The truck sat outside from Wednesday night until Friday morning. The weather was similar with high winds and snow. So the truck turned over but wouldn't start. It would cough, but that's it. So I checked the fuel pressure and it was holding at 61 psi. That was good. But there wasn't any snow packed in the engine compartment that I saw. So a buddy and me pushed it into a garage and turned on the heaters and after 15 minutes, it started caughed up and after a few seconds ran great. It belched thick blue/grey smoke for a bit, but it cleared up and ran fine.

Last night, I parked it in the my garage, recharged the battery that I drained, and it started up first crank this afternoon. But the weather was very windy and snowing again so I parked at work with the back end facing the wind. After 8 hours at work, the engine caughed when I tried to start it but nothing. It would sputter a few turns but nothing. There was still a little snow in the engine compartment but it wasn't packed in.

I towed it into the same garage as the first time and immediately after we pulled in, it started. Very weird.

I saw the potential flooding that can be caused by a faulty Inlet Air Temp Sensor. But my diagnoatic tool read the intake air temp was what the outside temp was. I guess that's ok since it had sat all day. I didn't see what the coolant temperature was. But I heard that the engine coolant sensor going bad could also cause flooding.

Is there some weird wind allergy the truck has or am I on the right track by replacing the engine coolant temp sensor?

 

A little bump here for this problem. I've been keeping the truck in a garage since these problems arose again. That way, if it doesn't start, I have a place to warm up and work on it. But the problem hasn't happened since. We've had some cold nights that have dropped down to below zero. And every day the truck starts no problem. On really cold days, I even checked the diagnostics on what the inlet temp sensor and water temp sensor were reading before I tried to start the truck and they were accurate.

But tonight, I parked the truck outside facing away from the wind and against a wall to try to keep the snow out of the engine compartment. When I came out after work, the truck was covered in snow and it started. But it was running rough and I was getting a P0101 code for CYL 1 detonation I think. I have to check it but the SES light was flashing just like it does on those codes.

Could this be a grounding problem with the plug wires or snow getting blown up into the distributer cap then melting causing moisture? A few years back the housing cracked on the distributer when I was screwing on a new cap and I just used a nut/bolt/washer to hold everything down. It's been secure but maybe there's some space for snow to sneak in if the wind is strong enough.

Any thoughts??? Thanks in advance

 

P0101 - Mass Air Flow System Performance

Start going through the diagnostic steps.

If the presence of snow and/or moisture causes the condition, I would look for a wiring fault or a problem with the ignition (spark) system.

 

How/where would I start to look for a wiring fault? and would you consider moisture up in the distributer a ignition problem or are you talking about something else more hardware related?

Thank you for the relpy.

 

There is no easy way to finding a wiring problem. It takes patience and determination to look over the wiring.

Moisture in the distributor would cause an ignition problem as it would cause the spark to scatter.