This morning my IS250 wouldn't start. The engine turned over but it wouldn't catch. This is the first time the car didn't start on the first attempt. I was fairly sure it wasn't a failing battery because the engine turned over quite strongly and the lights were working well and didn't dim.
After trying this a few times over the space of about 15 mins, I gave up, emailed my apologies for the 9am meeting I knew I wouldn't make and called the AA. The big yellow van arrived within about 40 mins.
No sooner was Mr AA out of the van and he asked me if I had moved the car. I said "No", thinking he was asking if I had tried to roll it. He clarified, looking at my narrow-ish driveway and asked "Did you start it up to move it out of the way of someone else". I remembered then that I had moved it briefly the previous afternoon and not used it since. The engine was probably running for all of 15 seconds. He proudly proclaimed "That's it! It's flooded!"
Now, I didn't think cars flooded since the good old days of my mother, an old Fiat and a choke. (The three of them just didn't seem to work well together!)
Apparently, I'm now well-informed, that an engine can flood if it is left running for less than a few minutes. It was a morning of revelations for me.
Anyway, as Mr AA is explaining to me how to remedy the problem, I'm breathing a sigh of relief and hoping he's right, because I had visions of the car sitting on the back of a flatbed truck, on its way to Mr Lexus, with my credit card taped to the bonnet!
The trick to starting the flooded engine, I readily observed, is to depress the accelerator. This tells the car to stop pumping fuel to the cylinders. Smart, but too-smart for me. I'd never have guessed at that bit of counter-intuitive logic. But, it worked. After three cycles of cranking the engine with the accelerator depressed, presumably burning off the excess petrol in the engine, the car started with the accelerator released.
Has anybody else encountered this problem?
I've read elsewhere that this starting procedure this can damage the cat in some cars - is that possible? Should Mr AA (to whom I was very grateful at the time) have done this? If it's okay, why don't Lexus describe the procedure in the manual?