>more cold start problems - scary HELP!
 

i had posted before about my cold start problems which have somewhate abated but seems not to have gone away. this weekend brought a 30 degree swing in weather from warm to very cold this morning. i drove my car saturday when it was in the 50's no problem. next time i started it up was this morning when it was 19 degrees and of course it faltered as i expected it to and i just kept cranking and gave it a little gas since that seems to help when it happens. it started, however, it was misfiring but after about 30 seconds the misfire went away. there remained a clattering sound which seemed to gradually diminish so i drove slowly and the noise continued to diminish until after 2 miles it was completely gone. it is now running normally and i started it up again after about 7 hrs and it started up and ran normally. this is the first time that this has happened. i am thinking of having the injectors cleaned via a power cleaning service where they inject something like techron directly into the throttle body. i don't know if there's anything else that i should do at the moment - any suggestions would be appreciated!

Check the auxiliary air valve and cold start injector.
Forget the injector cleaner via solvent injection through the throttle body, it never reaches the injector's internal parts. Pretty much a waste of cash. We looked at 321 repairs invoices/test results that used this procedure for e-test failures without any appreciable improvement to emissions.

i'm wondering what the clattering was - could it have been a stuck lifter?

Yes, especially in cold weather, parts shrink, sieze, oil thickens. Mine occasionally does the same thing,( in cold). I cant remember if yours has hydrolic or mechanical lifters, I'm thinking hydrolic.