I bought a 94 q45. when i try to start it it will crank then start. But when I start it for the first time of the day it starts right away. Is this a bad fuel pump?

Welcome to NICO!

It sounds like a flooding issue with a leaky lower injector o-ring. When I had an issue like this, the car would start up after sitting all night normally, or if it sat for 5 minutes or less - but a "hot soak" in a parking lot for 15 minutes or so up to about 5 hours would cause it take longer to start and yield a nice little puff of black smoke.

The reason it goes away overnight is that the fuel pressure leaks down so it stopps pushing fuel past the leaking o-ring, and the gas that puddles in the piston seeps past the piston rings if it has enough time...

Heath

thanks. So the fuel pump is not the problem? Do i need to replace the injectors. Previuos owner said he had the injectors cleaned.Also could the fuel filter be the problem as well?

I'm not ruling out the fuel pump, but the hard start after a hot soak sure sounds like flooding to me. You can test everything by teeing in a fuel pressure gauge and watching to see how fast the fuel pressure bleeds down. There's a TSB that goes into a great deal of detail on how to do this. It's attached to this post, see page 5.

If your injectors are otherwise OK, you should be able to "just" replace the o-rings - which is just as much labor as replacement, but substantially cheaper. You should ohm test your injectors to gauge their health before you decided how to proceed.

Check out the ohm test here... http://www.q45.org/ohminjectors.html

Heath

Does it have a gas/firecracker smell? My auto start comes on a lot easier since I did the fuel lines on the FPR, rail and filter...your due for real. Its hard to tell w/o seeing it.....

car does give a smell of gas

Check the MAF sensor, Oxygen sensors, and service manual for more info: http://Nicoclub.com/FSM/Q45

See http://Q45.org for more info on cleaning the MAF sensor.