starts once or twice a day

[hobojoe]

97 GTI

Previous problem I was working on: ski dies as soon as u give it gas.
Yesterday I was able to start the ski a few times and then decided to attach a hose to see if the ski would respond to throttle. I literally pushed the trailer 5-10 feet to attach the hose. I attached the lanyard and got response no power, or lights. I tinkered with connections and checked fuses and all seems fine. I gave up for the night and came out this morning to hook up the trailer to head home and decided to give it a try again. Sure enough I got lights and hit the start button. Engine turned over. I tried again without disconnecting the lanyard and got no response. I disconnected the lanyard and reattached- still nothing.... any idea what could be causing this issue?

 

[Dr Honda]

That's a strange one.

Try to get the problem, and then disconnect, and reconnect the battery.

 

[hobojoe]

Last night, I tried again. 6 times in a row everything worked fine. I tried repeated restarts without disconnecting the lanyard, I disconnected the lanyard and reconnected and everything is still fine. I guess I'll try again today to try to replicate and then disconnect the battery to see what happens.

 

[Dr Honda]

Let us know what you find.

Every once in a while, we find a ski that won't reset, and the MPEM has gone bad. (it's rare) The band-aid is to put a switch on the power wire going into the MEPM, so you can turn it on and off.

 

[hobojoe]

Well Sunday was work on the jetski day for me. I could not replicate my issue for anything! Each and every time it started right up. My beeper had gone out so I was just basing my testing on gauge lights. I ran to radio shack and did the beeper quick fix thanks to the beeper sticky! I get 2 beeps and lights every time. Even diagnostic mode- I start up no problems. Its either a short, or bad connection that the drive home on the trailer "fixed" or the only other variable was that it rained on the drive home possibly washing off the dess post? <shrug>

I do still have another issue on my other GTI on a different post titled "starter or solenoid??" I wanted to run by my method of troubleshooting by some of you more experienced guys to see if my method of thinking was on the right path. I havent gotten a response yet though from anyone. If you could take a minute Dr. Honda, I'd be really grateful.