Harbinger

So my car has been down for almost 2 months now. It all started with changing the starter. I was able to get that swapped out with great difficulty & to make a really lomg story short, also ended up having to loom the main harness(removed & destroyed the black plastic casing), swapped out the driver's side fuel rail & al 4 injectors, buy a new battery(although mine was only a year old), and now buy a new negative battery cable.

I finally got the fuel leaks stopped & everything buttoned up & went to start it up & at 1st all it did was click, even though I could hear the fuel pump running. I disconnected & reconnected the negstive cable, then lockec & unlocked the driver's door. Then it would turn over, but like it was laboring with a bad battery. Had the battery checked & it came back good(it is only a week old - replaced the year old battery tgey said had a bad cell, but never gave me issues until I changed the starter). My spotter also said my negative cable was smoking every time I cranked it. I checked things out & the negative cable was blazing hot, so I disconnected it & chevked everything else. Found that the ground to the driver's side ignitor was off, so I reconnected it(ignitors were replaced in dec, plugs in feb & wires oct or nov) and tried again. It still cranked like the battery was low, I could hear the fuel in the rails, but it still wouldn't start & still smoked from negative cable connection closest to the battery.

I figured it was a bad negative cable, so I replaced that this morning. No more heat or smoking, but still a no go as far as starting. All the dash lights come on, and with the variety of new or replacement parts I'm somewhat at a loss. ECU? Starter relay? Burn it and collect the insurance?

SC400slide

iTrader: (11)

You might need to check if you didn't connect a motor ground...that would cause problems. Also make sure your battery terminals on both sides are connected adequately. Also check for wires crossing the alternator, or broken/damaged wires from the alternator.

But whatever you do, DON'T BURN IT!!!

Harbinger

It's aliiiiive....

Well kind of. It starts and drives(ended up having to replace the cable runnng to the driver's side ignitor). Anyway, the car has been sitting for 2 months with maybe 3 gallons in it & a bottle of seafoam. I put another 12 gallons of Chevron 93 on top of that & when the dieseling still wouldn't stop, a bottle of lucas octane booster. The car is still dieseling so badly at idle I might as well be on a Harley & has so little power it can barely get out of its own way(getting on the highway was a joy). I'm down to 1/4 tank now, so is it just bad gas from sitting so long & I need to ride it out, or something more serious(even though there are no idiot lights on)???

Harbinger

So I resolved the starting issue, but as my last post says, my car shakes like a harley, has no power and sounds like an overgrown lawnmower. The only "new" things on it are the starter and the 4 driver's side fuel injectors. I figured it might be bad gas so I ran the tank of 87-93-seafoam-octane booster down to empty and put 10 gal of chevron 93 in the tank from another location. Still runs rough & has no power. Towards the end of running out the tank I threw a code 25, and this morning I was putting out a lot of white smoke, like I was seafoaming the car. The smoke just had an acrid burnt smell, so I figured it was just carbon depositsor moisture in the fuel burning off. That's what prompted me to burn through the rest of the tank.

I know what it ISN'T but I'm having a hel of a time figuring out what it IS. The car ran great before I did anything to it. I've done the 12v mod(1st thing I did when I got the car). It isn't the IACV since the idle is stable(just very rough) and it doesn't react regardless of the motion of the steering wheel. No vacuum leaks - everything was torqued and I double-checked all the hoses. If the O2 sensors were fine before I started any of this I'm going to assume they didn't go bad while the car was sitting. No exhaust leaks - I would have sen the smoke coming out this morning. When it started smoking I checked the oil level, so the dipstick isn't/wasn't out of place.

So it really comes down to either 1 of/both the FPR's possibly going bad(but if that was the case wouldn't I have thrown a code immediately?) or one or more of the injectors I just put in are bad(wouldn't this have thrown a code as immediately well??). Any ideas? Oh, and if it helps, when I try to accelerate, the car bogs HARD unless I'm on the highway & can get it above 3k rpms. Then it smooths out. I can't get the rpms that high from a stop or accelerating on surface streets.

Harbinger

Since I haven't been able to find out which individual fuel component is causing my issues, I'm replacing the whole fuel rail assembly (both rails, all 8 injectors, front & rear connecting rails, fpr and pulse dampener. I was able to pull an unmolested unit whole from a running engine with no codes(hard rear end collision) at a semi-local recycler for less than it was going to cost to order ust the fpr and dampener from rock auto. Gotta say Thanks to the guys at Lane's. They also have a beautiful 97-00 Black/Tan SC3 for sale, but the owner wasn't around for me to get specifics. They haven't even posted it yet, but I may have found a new DD ;-) Anyway, hopefuly this will be the end of my issues. Parts go on in the morning, and I'll post an update later on.