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Car dying, don't know why


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I was WRONG - it wasn't the regulator! :

 

(Wow – this got long!)

 

You guys may remember my "stalling out for no reason" problem.

 

First I was thinking it was carb, ignition, fuel pressure regulator.

 

Eventually, the carb was ruled out, as well as the oil pressure fuel pump cut-out switch, fuel pump wiring. Bought a new regulator (same one as I had that came with the Holley Blue pump). That wasn't it either, although the one I had DID stick a bit sometimes. I stretched the spring in it and that went away.

 

Several months ago the car left me stranded for hours and I ALMOST had to have it flat bedded. Got back to the car after a nice Auxiliary police dude gave me a lift to the phone where I called AAA for a tow (yeah, I need a cell phone – working on it). I was 2 miles from home, 12 midnight. THAT was the last straw. I'd had the Holley Pro-jection 4D 700cfm system sitting in a box for months (got it used at a great price from an old V8Z'er named David Spillman that sold his V8Z to jt1 on hybridz). I was pissed, and even though it was Spring, I decided the Z had to come off the road to put that system in, which included me running a new 1/2" AL hard line. I didn't like using the 3/8" AL hard line I had in the tunnel, as it was very close to the tranny. Plus the inside diameter of a 3/8" AL hard line is 5/16" - probably too small for near 500 hp the new 406 will have.

 

I work slowly, and sporadically, so I only got the car back on the road in the last few weeks.

 

Since getting the Pro-Jection on and running, I've been having trouble with the car dying on me again. I decided that since everything from the tank forward in the fuel system had been replaced, that the problem was the stock fuel pickup tube or filter sock inside the tank (assumptions, assumptions…). I had used Eastwood Co's tank sealer on the tank and was afraid I'd sealed the sock off partially causing it to "clog" sometimes. So I tapped out the drain plug in the tank for 1/4 NPT pipe thread, put a close nipple, nice open 90 deg. elbow and hose barb fitting on it and connected it to the hose going to the new Holley-spec filter before the Holley Pro-jection pump.

 

I took the car out Thursday night and things seemed a lot better – soon into my drive it died one time, but I thought that was because I’d flooded it. I drove around for an hour twisting the knobs on the Pro-jection tuning box and got the car to run pretty good (although my vacuum is too low (12-14 inHg) for the speed-density Pro-jection computer to make it idle well. No biggie - just crank the idle up to 1100rpm and reset the TPS :).

 

A buddy (Glen McCoy - LONGTIME V8Z guy) and I headed south for Mike Kelly's Z bash Saturday – about 100 miles each way. Horrible traffic. And the stinking car cut out on us a half dozen times just getting to Springfield from rt 50 and 301. We stalled and had to fit on the just-wide-enough for a Z shoulder of the Woodrow Wilson bridge over the Potomac on the Washington beltway!!! NOT a good thing!

 

The engine died again a mile down the road. Glen untwisted the gas cap and was almost decapitated by the cap, as I hadn't vented the tank (Jeez, I can be stupid!!!). My high tech solution was to let the chain on the cap lay over the edge of the cap receiver before twisting it on (only one tab engaged). :) We thought that was the problem. But the pump was too hot to touch, and only putting out 5psi (by the lousy, sticking Holley 0-30psi gauge - found out later that it was sticking. But it really was only getting about 5psi - not enough for the injectors to do much more than idle!!! We let the pump cool down and got back to 11psi and hit the road again.

 

The engine died several more times on the exit ramp from the beltway to 95 south - probably the most littered shoulder I've ever seen - I can't believe we didn't get a flat. And the last time in the middle of an intersection in downtown Springfield, where Glen jumped out and got the back corner of his ankle/foot run over by the 255/45-17 rear tire!!! We pushed it into the gas station parking lot and went to get some much-needed water and to cool off in the A/C. My A/C is not working (it's on the to-do list!!!)

 

Got back to the car, it barely ran, and put a full tank in it - it was down to about 2 gallons left - I didn’t believe my recalibrated Autometer fuel gage, but should have as it was near empty. The fuel being this low made the problem of stalling worse, because the pump is a few inches above the bottom of the tank (I should have listened to the instructions - I will fix that soon...)

 

We were thinking it was just that the tank wasn't vented, possibly the pump was mounted too high to give pressure when the tank was ¼ full, and the pump got so hot that it stopped making enough pressure. But we were able to cruise (very gingerly) down to Fredericksburg and meet up with some fellow HybridZers, eat, look at some Z stuff, steal Z parts from Mike ( ;) ), have a good time, etc. Oh, Doug Carrow very nicely informed me that my Z was leaving a little puddle of gasoline under it on Mikes new garage floor - Grrr - I had tapped the NPT threads too far and the close-nipple couldn't get tight enough. Doug suggested to epoxy it in - great idea!

 

Doug is full of cheap, very inventive ways to solve problems and do mods to the Z - his Z is full of them!!

 

We left and had an uneventful time going home - never letting the tank get below 1/2 (that's 1/4 on my non-linear gage ....) Of course, we were taking it really easy. Glen was doing the tiniest adjustments to the knobs on the Pro-jection tuning module (unlike my ham-fisted attempts that were getting no-where) and he had it cruising great - 5th gear at 1600rpm (yes, with that lumpy cam) and very nice acceleration away from there!!! No carb would do that!

 

I woke up Sunday and found that my wife had left the garage door up earlier in the AM, since it smelled like there was a puddle of gas on the floor in the closed garage - which there was!!!! I knew I had to fix that immediately, so once I got a chance, I took the Z out to burn as much fuel as I felt safe doing so I could drain the tank and fix the leak. I did some tuning with the HONDO software the Dave Greimann has on his site - I could get it to bounce around 0.5Volts O2 at cruise below 3000 rpm with the knows near the middle of the settings or below, but above that 3000 rpm, I had to turn the main jet up to max, and the high rpm jet setting almost to max. I decided to see what O2 correction would do on the HONDO screen on the laptop and unplugged the tuning module from the ECU to allow that. Anything more than slight acceleration in the 3000+ rpm range made the O2 correction go quickly to 50% (where it tops out) and then the car fell on it's face.

 

I figured the ECU must be hosed or the injectors were clogged or something. ECU hosed? - no biggie, my Megasquirt is working on the bench, and I'm close to having an adapter box designed to be able to plug it into the Pro-jection harness. I'm looking forward to the better datalogging and fine tuning I'll have with that, as well as using alpha-n for idle and speed-density above that. But I digress....

 

The car started to cut out on me again. The fuel level was a bit above "E" on the gage, which means there's about 5 gallons left. But I knew this was where the pump had to work hard to pull fuel uphill from a low level in the tank so I limped to a station and put a few gallons in.

 

I got home o.k. and started to take the fuel out. I had some extra length on the fuel hose to the throttle body, so I undid it and used the fuel pump to fill my 2 gallon can in the engine bay. It TRICKLED out in a 1/4" stream (out of the 3/8" hose), where it should have shot out a foot or something! I figured I'd damaged the fuel pump by not venting the tank, and letting the pump get so hot.... 6 gallons later (glad the Eclipse wasn't full already :) ) and the pump wouldn't pump - the tank was empty.

 

Still reading? Now for final thickening of the yearlong problem with the car cutting out....

 

I got under the tank and disconnected the hose I'd put on those fittings I'd just put into the drain hole of the tank. Then unscrewed the fittings out the hole in the bottom of the tank.....

 

I could not believe my eyes! A piece of twisted up tan-ish stuff, about 1/4" in diameter was sticking out of the hole. I pulled out a 4" long piece. I unraveled it and found that it was an irregularly shaped piece of thin tan plastic that was TIGHTLY twisted and compressed into a hard cord. Probably about 10 square inches worth!

 

I knew exactly what it was - Eastwood's tank sealer. I followed all their directions, but something went wrong. The stuff had delaminated from the inside of the tank and broke off and got sucked into the new tank outlet I'd fashioned. I remember hearing "crackling" when I put very cold (30 deg F) gasoline into the dry, sealed tank back when I first started the V8 in January 2002. The stuff cracked up and probably started delaminating on that day. BTW, the Eastwood tank sealer is white - I imagine fuel or additives turned it to tan.

 

I then looked into the nipple/90 elbow/hose barb fitting assembly that I'd unscrewed from the bottom of the tank. TOTALLY (well, obviously not TOTALLY, but it sure looked like it!) clogged with the tan plastic stuff. I took the fittings apart and used my tiny needle nosed pliers to PULL the jammed wads of tank sealer out of the elbow. I unraveled them - approximately 4 or 5 square inches of the sealer had very tightly been packed into the 1/4†NPT female/female elbow by the fuel pump struggling to supply the engine with fuel.

 

No wonder the engine was dying! I'm surprised it could run at all!

 

The tank has to come out. I have the original tank that looks not too bad that I'll probably send out to have a bit if rust taken out of (near the seam, from what I can see through the filler opening.) I hope to be back on the road in a few weeks.

 

That's got to be the longest post I've ever written (or read) !

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