Saturday, September 19, 2009

spew

I repaired the entire fuel system except the injector rail - clean tank, new filter and a nice clear prefilter to check fuel flow, a spare pump I had from the Spider, new rubber hoses, the works. (I found a .45 shell plugging the outflow line from the tank.)

I reconnected the disconnected lines under the hood to the fuel rail, and tried to start it. Nothing happened which is about what I had expected, but after some fiddling I realized the fuel pump wasn't running. I poked and prodded and tested and found (eventually) that the spare fuel pump is in fact dead. I removed the fuel pump from the Spider and installed it in the Brava, and triggered the switch on the air flow meter that starts the pump. Bubbles went through my prefilter, I became excited, and then a geyser of gasoline shot from beside the manifold - apparently the crimped rubber hose is old and shrunken, so I'll have to replace that. Then I noticed a spreading puddle of gas on the garage floor, dripping from the driver's rear floor pan, and discovered that in addition to the leaky rubber hose, the metal high-pressure fuel line has rusted through.

I won't deny it, this is a bit of a setback. I'm going to have to run new lines, and that kind of stuff takes a lot of time that I am rapidly running out of. I've got to have this ready for the cage and seat installation in the next three weeks at most, and that's cutting it pretty thin, and the brakes still need to be fixed, and the clutch replaced, if I can manage it.

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