It's alive - IT'S ALIVE

Oh yeah - I get her running again!

It was a hectic weekend for sure - got back with the family from a short visit with friends up in Madison Wisconsin, wherein my oldest boy decided to get married. Anyway - I was pretty distracted for most of the trip thinking about this damn fuel issue, and bummed beyond any reasonable amount because I was going to miss the DE on Friday. Although I would like to replace the fuel system from pump to regulator, I just don't have the time this week since I'm out of town on business from Monday until late Thursday night.

Damned the luck.

So, it's really hot up there - and Sunday, we're pretty much cooped up inside and the kids are getting wild. Really wild. Wild to the point that we're afraid something may end up broken, or a trip to the ER was inevitable. So we decide that, being prudent parents, we should probably get on the road sooner than later. After a nice starchy lunch for the boys, we're on the road and heading home. A distressingly short 30 minute nap was followed by another 2 hours of driving and general mayhem leading to us pulling into the driveway around 3pm. And it's just as hot here at home.

Of course, during the ride home I'm thinking about how I can leverage our early time back to possibly work on the car and make one last attempt to get the thing running well enough to get me up to the track on Friday.

- back to parenthood. We've got three boys who have been in the car for the last 150 minutes and need to use up some energy.

Sprinkler time! Snack time! Runaround time! Iced latte time!!

Whip up some burgers, make some lemonade - hey! Don't spray your brother. No, NO! the grill is hot. Here, eat this - NO MORE SPRAYING. Sit HERE. Ok, inside - wash your hands. Downstairs while we get a bath ready. Hut hut hut hut.

Whew.

Side bar - Amy and I have the bath thing down to military like efficiency. If required, we can get three boys bathed and dried in under 9 minutes. It's quite frantic, but somewhat satisfying.

Anyway - it's about 6pm now, and everyone is winding down. The Incredibles is on the DVD and the boys are chilling in their PJs. A calm falls on the Stein household.

Then Amy, my wife and soul mate - best friend and confidant issues forth the most pertinent, loving and opportune question to be heard all weekend: "Do you want to go work on the car? I can put the kids to bed."

ShaaaaaZAM!

Wow - that woman is amazing.

So, I'm out in the driveway in a flash - cars on the street, push out the 911, jack up the front - block the wheels and begin:

1. Drain tank via plug on the bottom - most of the tank had been emptied already on Friday, so this is just the dregs at the bottom. Messy work, but not too bad. The integrated filter on the plug was 'kind of' dirty, but not that bad. Clean the filter, re-insert the plug.
2. Drop the skid plate under the steering rack and disconnect the feed tube from the fuel pump to filter and blow some compressed air through the line - with any luck, I'll un-clog gunk stored in there.
3. Remove the filter and tap tap tap - pretty dirty in there. Blow some air through there for good measure.
4. Re-plumb everything and add a couple of gallons to the tank. Turn the fuel pump on and look for leaks. Everything seems kosher and I've got some (marginal) pressure building up. Crank the engine and.... Vroooom. We have ignition!
5. Pressure still poor - clamp off return line and watch it rise to almost 5PSI - nice! Rig up a clamp to pinch more of the return line with some wire and balance it out ~2.5PSI. Engine is idling a little rough, but that's probably due to the timing issue (remember, I have an old rotor in here now after the back fire incident).
6. Button up the skid plate while the car idles and lower the front end - pressure still holding. Sweet!
7. Whip out the timing light and re-adjust the timing. Engine now sounds smoooooooth.
8. Dump the rest of the reclaimed fuel back into the tank, button'r up and go for a test drive.
   

So out I go at around 8:30pm. 2.5 hours and a lot of work later, but damn, the car feels good! I've got myself half convinced that the gargle/hesitation is gone and I'm tooling around town. Stop by the local Shell station and fill up the tank. Start up the car again and take a gander at the pressure gauge.

Shit.

1PSI - barely.

*sigh*

Well, let's see how it feels. Take the long way home and spend some time on the road in a 'spirited' manner to see how things feel. Not perfect, but better. I think the hesitation is back, but maybe not so pronounced - then again, it might all be in my head. Well - let's try a couple more hard accelerations...

Left turn behind an older Ford Explorer - gad dude can you GO ANY SLOWER? Goose it after we're past the turn and blow by him on the right - winding it up to 6000 RPM. Hmmm, not too bad - I can certainly live with this for the Friday DE and then I'll...oh shit, is that a cop in the mirror. Coming up fast - could be, may be, SHIT. Queue racing heart. Well - lessee, what kind of excuse can I whip up here? "Well you see officer, I was out trying to diagnose this fuel flow issue and the only way I can really tell is when I accelerate hard, you know and I wasn't trying to speed or anything but unless I wind the engine up to like 4000 RPM under load I can't tell if the problem still exists except for the silly mis-calibrated pressure gauge which is under the deck lid so I can't see it while I'm driving and have you ever heard of a blog? because I have one that kind of describes..."

Never mind - I'll just take my licking.

I decided to be a bit proactive and pull over before he hits the lights - so I take a right into the nearest parking lot and stop underneath a nice bright light. Open the door and I'm out of the car just as Officer Friendly pulls up. He rolls down the passenger side window and says (I'm paraphrasing here, since my brain has basically stopped functioning at this point) "Don't be hot rodding around right in front of a marked squad."

"Sorry," I replied, "it's just that..."

"I don't care - really" he stopped my excuse. "It's just that, when you go flying by someone like that, and that guy is looking at me with that 'are you going to do something about that?' look, I have to do something."

"I understand," I stated "I've been trying to..."

"I really don't care," he says, again breaking into my excuse "be safe."

Then he drives off.


Yeah, I need to write that again - THEN HE DRIVES OFF.

No ticket - no warning. Just a cool cop.

Whew.

So I drive - nice-and-slow like back to my house, park the car and close the garage.


Time? 9:30pm. Better go pack for my trip tomorrow.