Hi everyone,
first of all thanks to paul, the mysterious bullwinkle, nina, charles, paul,
max and everyone else who has been so helpful.
After i thought i had fixed the problem by cleaning up the spad connector
contacts ont he outside of the fuel pump. the car started and died again
this morning.
We towed it to the shop (British and European autos, sunnyvale, CA), where
of course it refused to replicate the problem. The mechnic there - Brandon -
is a very nice guy, i'd met him once before and he had impressed me in his
thoroughness at checking over a car. Bit more expensive than they guy i know
in sacramento, but this is silicon valley!
Anyhow, he can't find anything obviously wrong in the fuel line, filter or
pump. and he asks me whether the enginge cut back, slowed and died, or
whether it just stopped dead as if i had turned the key. I have been
suffering the latter (or consistently the latter since i fixed the pump) and
he said this indicated an ignition problem more likely than a fuel problem.
useful distinction to know about (does this help Geoff with your starting
problem)?
Anyway he then dives into the rats nest of the POs electronic ignition.
First off its such a rats nest because there are actually TWO! one partially
disconnected, and one that is actually running the car! Anyway he pokes
about for a bit and then pulls the distributor. Therein lay (we hope) the
fault. The EI in the distributor had not been propperly installed, so that
the rotor was wearing the wires going to the coil, and also the rotor itself
was worn, thus plastic dust and chips from both the rotor and the wires had
got all through the distributor.
So all told with towing, new distributor, rotor, cap and two hours labour
i'm looking at $400. crap. but i guess i'd have been stumped by this one for
a long time, and i'm stranded right now!
He also suggested that for complete peace of mind i should replace the pump
too (another $200 with parts and labour) seeing as the unit is getting old.
What do you think about this? I could do it myself and save the $75 labour,
or i could just crucify my bank balance in one go and be done with it. Is
there any way of telling when the pump will fail or will it simply give out
on me all of a sudden whilst i'm on the freeway? I still have time to ask
him to fit a new pump, so any advice would be really helpful.
So charles gets bonus points for guessing right first time that it was the
distributor. I'll keep you all posted.
thanks for all the help,
cheers
Joe
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