agreed. its been steadily above freezing here lately. had a nasty thaw last week that cause alot of flooding, thankfully not where my car was, heh. so i highly doubt it could be water in the lines. i drove it 2 days before this issue came up.
im thinkin about getting some injector cleaner and letting the injectors sit in it for a while to clean them out if theyre clogged.

 

tried the injector cleaner, and it did the same thing that the starter fluid did. started up then immediately died. when I disconnect the fuel line from the fuel rail, fuel comes out under a bit of pressure. So I'm thinking my injectors are shot.

 

Remove the injectors, soak them in brake cleaner and hook a 12V power supply up to them indvidually. This will open the injector and allow the brake cleaner to work its way through and remove most of the crap.

Alot of Miata owners have done this with great success. Beats the s**t out of forking out for a new set.

I'd also change the fuel filter and check the fuel pressure as a matter of course.

 

ok how cold was it when you tried to start it? Same exact thing happened to mine the other day. it was -2 and wouldnt start. Cranked over fine. Finally got it started after about 20 min. A check engine light came on and it was P0118 - Coolant temp sensor high input. Basically I think that means it thought my car was warm already. See if your pulling any codes

 

Our fuel filter is more like a sock over the pick-up in the tank. It's not easy to change and doesn't filter that much anyway.

 

It was 45 F out. When I tried. The car was sitting for 3 weeks while I was home for xmas/new years. I did have a friend start it up every few days and let it run for 15min, but it wasn't actually driven. I did source some new injectors locally (thanks to the local forums on here) and I'm picking them up today. I figure thats the best route to go. Trying to get my existing injectors to work doesn't sound like it will ultimately fix the problem. What could stop it from happening again, you know?

 

well i got the new injectors and what a surprise it still wont start! im getting really tired of this shit.

 

what about the alternator?? me and a buddy recently had to take mine out to install my spoon thermostat, and yesterday, I was driving and my dash all of a sudden went black, "EPS" lit up on the dash, and the power steering began to fail. then the car died. It was a cable to the alternator that had come lose.. might wanna check that too!!

 

Have you done a compression test? If not do one My car did the same exact thing. It had fuel,spark, and air. My problem was the valve lash was so bad the valves were being held open to the point where cylinder 1 had a reading of 90. After the adjustment it shot right up to 230 and fired right up.

 

This may be a stretch, but have you used fuel containing ethanol lately? 10% is probably too low a concentration to make a difference, but ethanol has been know to knock sediment loose and clog fuel systems, similar to the fuel injector cleaner.

Like I said, probably a stretch, but anything is worth considering at this point.