Fuel, Water and Electricity *bangs head on wall*

Fuel leaks, coolant leaks, and blown fuses. That about sums up the evening…

First off, a HUGE thanks to everyone who came over tonight. Henry, Ronnie, Terec, Ian, Eric, Scott, and Andy, without you guys helping out I wouldn’t have gotten anything done tonight!

Here’s a basic summary of how things went tonight. Henry and Ronnie showed up first and got to work on finishing the wiring in the engine bay. They by far did the most, if not all of the work on the wiring on the car, I had put together three wires, but they as a team cranked through some things, far faster than I could ever hope to.

While they spent time working on the wiring in the engine bay I did a little work in the passenger compartment trying to get some wires run, finding parts for them, and trying to close up some ports on the intake before the turbo but after the MAF.

Before heading to the interior to do wiring Henry, Ronnie, and I attempted to crank the starter, to see if it would fire. Because this car is now a manual, but originally was an auto Ronnie wired up a relay to bypass the neutral safety switch that keeps the starter from firing if the car isn’t in park. We were unable to locate the stock relay but found some of the wiring so we just ended up bypassing the whole thing.

When they were working on the interior wiring I finished up some of the engine mount bolts that needed tightening and started cleaning up the Ford plug wires that I had picked up from the junkyard a while back.

The rest of the guys started showing up, when Whittle called me I told him we were about half an hour from trying to start the car, he’s the Megasquirt Guru so I asked him to come over and assist us with things while we tried. By the time he arrived we weren’t quite ready, but we thought we were close.

Once the Whittle’s showed up we ran some fuel through the fuel system into a jug (rather than the fuel rail) to try and clean out the hoses and pump, to keep any buildup from getting into the rail and injectors. That testing went fine, but as soon as we hooked the fuel lines back up and sent some pressure through the system we found a few leaks. The fittings at the fuel filter in the engine bay had been put together without Teflon, lesson learned, 10 minutes later it was all back together again and pressure testing started up. Then we found a bigger issue, but one that didn’t dump near as much fuel out. We can’t seem to get the injector for the number 1 cylinder sealed into the fuel rail, it looks like the 2 and 3 injectors are also leaking a bit. So, tomorrow, the fuel rail will come off and we’ll try to make adjustments.

On the electrical side of things: At first, we couldn’t get the MS to fire up at all with the power from the car. After about 15 minutes, and Whittle about to give up I started looking for wires and remembered, we ran the TPS and TPS Signal wires, but don’t currently have a TPS to hook up to, well sure enough, they were sitting right on the intake manifold. As soon as I removed them the Squirt fired up in Megatune. Then there were a few other gremlins. The MS seemed to be getting power spikes, though not completely resetting itself and firing the fuel pump again.

At first, we thought this was a grounding issue, but I believe I’ve now tracked it down just to be a source issue. While trying to track that down we started blowing fuses in the stock wiring. We couldn’t figure out why that was happening until I looked at what we had wired into for the switched power line. I found that we were jumped into a line for the AC, well two days ago I pulled the AC system from under the dash and the wiring was still there, half hanging out of the car, which of course was touching the chassis, and causing our problem. Once I figured that out I removed the AC wire from the equation. That corrected the fuse issue, but we’re still getting the power fluctuations, so I’ll be tracking those down by checking grounds tomorrow, and then by running a new switched line from the battery if the ground search doesn’t prove fruitful.

As Terec and I were putting things away in the garage and rolling the car back in I noticed some antifreeze that was pooled up on the steering rack bracket. At first I thought this was related to a loose plug that Terec had found earlier in the night, so we soaked up the pool and hoped that would be all we had to think of that. I got under the car though and started looking around with a paper towel, I swear I thought I found a place where more coolant was collecting, which isn’t a good sign. So we gave it all a good wiping down to try and dry it off, I’ll look at it again tomorrow and see if there’s more coolant, and if so try to track down that leak.

So as of right now, in order to get this car running I need to: a) figure out the wiring issue b) figure out the fuel leak in the rail c) see if the coolant is still leaking and then fix the leak.

Of those items right now, C scares me the most, I’m hoping I don’t have to replace a head gasket or anything of the like.

I’ll have video up from tonight, both my usual format, and some HD video as well.