sorry for not updating here. i haven't had a chance to look at the car again since my initial post. since then, i was involved in a fairly serious car accident, so between dealing with insurance and doctors, i haven't felt much like moving...let alone pull wrenches.
nevertheless... i'm quite the opposite. i can't figure out carburetors but can deal with computers just fine. carbs are magic to me. farting around with orifices and needles... sounds like bad party time for me.
the weird thing about the whole fuel injected engine thing... is that on starting, the computer essentially flies blind dumping fuel in with the injectors at a set programmed rate, which should be JUST enough fuel to get it going till the engine catches and the other sensors start coming to life and it can start adjusting things since it can now "see". this happens about 200 revs in. (this is typically why you experience a settling of the engine after about 5 to 10 seconds after start, its switching from going blind, to working with the sensor data)
seems to me that there is just excess fuel entering the intake somehow... flooding out the plugs before that happens. and I'll explain why i think that.
the thing is... the problem doesn't "go away" when it's warm... it's issue is being masked by the computer doing all kinds of things to the fuel system to compensate to keep the engine running. in this case... it's pulling most of the fuel out (IE shortening the injector pulse time to spray less fuel) and it's still reading that the engine exhaust is way rich.
this shortening of the injector pulses is called "fuel trim" and it uses a long term (average over the last drive cycle(s)) and short term (calculated on the fly as the data regarding the exhaust enrichment state comes in.) to determine how long to keep the injector open and spray fuel for to keep that juicy juice ratios good. so if the LFT (long fuel trim) is at -1% and the SFT (short fuel trim) is at -3% the injector timing is reduced -4% to hopefully get the rate around 0 (i say -/+10% is fine.) when it make the adjustment and the fuel reads good for a bit... the SFT is added to the LFT so the long is now -4 and the short is about 0.
these percentages are calculated by a fuel map... a series of data points where the factory has said at this RPM at this temperature, at this engine load... you need to keep the injector open for this many milliseconds to achieve the perfect air fuel ratio.
if we have to ADD (+) fuel to this number... maybe our fuel filter is clogged a little... maybe the pump is weak.... injectors plugged up with gunk... maybe there is a vacuum leak and excess air compared to fuel is getting in and we have to dump in more fuel to compensate for this excess air.
if we have to PULL (-) fuel to this number... maybe out air filter is clogged... maybe the throttle body is not working properly. maybe an injector is stuck... excess fuel compared to the air coming in is off balance. we have to take out some of the fuel to compensate.
we don't seem to have excess air, we seem to have excess fuel (as evidenced by the flooding on startup)
so in this case, when the engine is running we get somewhere around -20 on the SFT and about -24 on the LFT so it's pulling -44% out of the injector pulse time or almost half when it is running. is is WAAY more that what you'd expect. (+/-10% total)
so the excess fuel is still there when it's running and it's just being mostly compensated for by the computer fuel trims only putting in a tiny bit of fuel that it would "normally" use as defined by the factory in the default fuel map and the adjustments to the LFTs and SFTs. it's getting closer, but not close enough to get the air fuel ratio in line with what it wants. eventually this car will throw a code saying "bank 1/2 too rich" or the like.
I don't THINK the gas is stale. it only sat a couple months. (maybe 5 months tops) the tank is about 1/2 full. it appears to be a fair weather driven vehicle so it wasn't run in the winter or anything like that. so it would have failed sometime this spring/summer.
I have a plan to pull the fuel line and take a sample and see if it's nice and clear or if it's discolored with varnish or chunky looking. i have pushed the schrader valve on the rail and had fuel come out (initially checking for fuel pressure) it didn't seem odd to me, but i'll probably take a bigger sample and see. maybe it has crap in it or other evidence that the injectors are indeed the issue. i don't know if these injectors are serviceable in any way (some can be back flowed with cleaner while energised to clear out stuff)
otherwise i might just throw a set of junkyard injectors in it and see what happens.