cozye

I pulled the tank by myself, put it in by myself too. The tank is very light empty, maybe 20lbs or so. empty it first If you loosen the straps enough to allow the filler side to drop, you can get the hoses etc.. off before completely dropping the tank. The worst thing that can happen during tank removal is you tear an old hose or break a strap bolt. Either one is no biggie. Another thing to be careful on the strap bolts is that they are "j" bolts, with an eyelet that slides into a slot on a "frame" rail in the unibody. The frame rail is only 16ga sheet metal, and if you crank on a frozen bolt hard enough you could bend out the slot in the frame rail. I suggest if working with a frozen bolt to use a pair of vice grips on the top to help hold it while working with it and not put extra stress in the mounting slot. The J-bolts are no longer available, so if you break one you either have to fabricate something, or find a used one. I made a new one by using the top part of the "j" welded to a new bolt with the head cut off and used new nuts.

FWIW, there are "factory" soldered junctions in the wiring harness.

Just FYI, there are 3 bolts you must undo from the underside too. Each rear sock has 6 bolts/nuts (3 on each side)

You need to flip the springs. My back springs were several inches longer than the fronts. Tell your buddy to lay off the Cochonette prior to spring install ,

Is the negative usually on the drivers side of the battery? I'm wondering if I've even got the right battery in the car.

my existing cables have been cut, new ends put on. they are a little tight for my liking. Battery hardware is gone and battery is strapped to the edge of the battery tray shelf. I'd planned on getting the hardware kit, correct length cables, and "fixing" the Po's work.. I suppose I could wait until I get the hardware and then measure for the length that I think I'll need.

I see that the OEM battery cables are NLA. Rock Auto has positive and negative cable listed for an AC/Delco part. Anyone try this or have an alternate suggestion? I don't need an "original" part, just cables that fit properly.

You have to drop the tank and at least twist the muffler out of the way. There isn't any real "hidden" bolts. but you won't be able to move those huge shocks out of the hole and from underneath. There isn't enough room. The shocks have some undercoat and sealer on the mating surface, once the bolts are removed a sharp rap with a hammer on the end will break them loose. You will want to save the nuts and bolts to plug the holes that it leaves in your floor. And the passenger side gas tank strap bolt commonly breaks, so soak it good in PBR blaster.

Your FPR is good. That's what that tells you. You've got a huge vacuum leak, or a valve issue. I'm surprised the car even runs with 5" of vacuum. The vacuum ideally should be around 18 at idle. anything under 16 would be unacceptable. You need vacuum to suck fuel and air into the cylinders. http://atlanticz.ca/zclub/techtips/vacuum/

Nice that you were finally able to take her for a spin.

Also, make sure you watch your fluid level on the clutch reservoir when bleeding. You will get about 5 or 6 "pumps" before you run it dry and have to start over.

moving the rod is normal. Mine actually came loose in the box and I had to insert it in the boot and attach the boot. No worries. Also on the clutch bleed, read the manual. It's a bit different. Once you get some fluid going in the clutch line, all you have to do is keep pumping the pedal with the bleed screw slightly open, with a tube attached and the hose down in a jar of brake fluid. you don't have to close the bleed screw when letting off the clutch pedal like you do when you do brakes. coolant temp sensor. There are two. There is one for the gauge, which does nothing except make an output to your gauge. The other is the "water temp sensor" with the bosch two lead plug on it (same as fuel injector connector). Thats the single most important sensor in your EFI system. The a/f mixture is adjusted directly off this input. Very important it is reading accurate. Air regulator, yes, yours may be bad. Mine was mostly working. It would open up some, and it would close when the car got hot. It wouldn't open up enough to give me a good fast idle when it was cold though. It's not important to fix that right now as long as its closing all the way when the car is warm. You can verify this by pulling the hose out of the throttle body boot when the car is hot, and making sure it's not sucking air though the hose. You will have to put your thumb over the hole in the boot when performing this test or the car will die. I recently replaced my air regulator, it opens further when cold and I get a good fast idle now. Rock Auto did not have the one for my year in stock so I had to pay $100 and order from MSA.

The gauge is off I suspect. Does the car have the stock fuel pressure regulator on? A lot of people, including myself just install this gauge http://www.summitracing.com/parts/SUM-800160/

I'd worry about messing with the fuel lines to replace the dampener, unless you are replacing lines and clamp. I'm sure there is nothing wrong with it. My fuel pump is the original, its 33 years old If it puts out a steady fuel pressure I'm sure its fine too. I've got a spare though.

Mine has done it as low as 45 degrees, and the fuel pressure doesn't drop for hours. What would happen would be just enough leak for the air to come in the line, then the boil would actually raise fuel pressure up on the fuel gauge to about 37 or so within 5 minutes. All it takes is a slight leak to drop the fuel pressure low enough and introduce a little air for it to start a boil. Once it boils just a little, the pressure actually rises. I was told that's how to tell if I had the hot start/vapor lock issue. If you don't have it the fuel pressure shouldn't move at all once the car is shut off. If I left it alone overnight the fuel pressure would eventually leak down. I believe gas will boil at 29 psi or so. Feel the fuel rail when it's shut off, even in this cooler weather its too hot to the touch. Mines not doing it now since I replaced the leaking cold start valve. Seems to be holding fuel pressure for days. In any case, he's got a leak in the fuel pressure somewhere.

what you are explaining could still be the normal hot start issue. The fuel rail loses pressure slightly, gas boils a bit putting air in the fuel rail, you restart the car 10 minutes later, and after reving it a few times it goes away.. The reason why is like Sarah stated. The fuel rail has air in it. When you rev it up, the FPR opens a little since it gets high vacuum on it, which circulates fuel through the fuel rail faster. If yours did like mine, you can put your ear up to the passenger side floor board while you are revving it up, and actually hear the bubbles in the fuel rail being sucked though. Whatever the fix is, the cause is a leak down in your fuel pressure somewhere. Also, if you suspect the check valve, you can pull it off the fuel pump (it's the outlet nipple). It comes off with an open end wrench. What I did to test it was I pulled it off, inspected it, sprayed some lube in the spring etc.. and put some air pressure on it against the flow to see if it would hold air pressure. I wouldn't bother replacing the dampener yet, as it's not a source for pressure leak down and I don't think it's too common for those to go bad and cause issue. Also don't forget that a leaking injector could quite possibly be the culprit.

Also, I'm not saying you were running rich. Just looking at your plugs they didn't look like you were running overly lean. The one plug did look a little rich, or like it was misfiring because it was more black while the others were tan.

Can you put the AFM back to the stock setting, or do you not know what the stock setting is ?

gryt, I'll post back up as soon as I'm sure it's not leaking. Last time I put the seal in I looked at the clymers manual and it didn't say anything special. This time I looked at the FSM and as you suggested, it recommended oiling the crank surface, the outer edge of the seal, and used lithium grease on the inside lip of the seal. I'm sure it will hold up now..

Got it all put back together tonight. I'll say this. I compared the new/leaking seal against the brand new felpro I got to replace it. The new leaking one is thinner, and the sealing lip that rides on the crank is like half the size. the diameter of the opening is wider as well. When I held the felpro against it with the old one in front, there is a lot more lip material on the felpro. In addition the lip is wider and the whole seal is thicker/deeper. I'm fairly confident it will do a better job. The new/leaking/old one, whatever you want to call it, came from MSA and is the national brand. It will probably be a couple weeks before I can puts some miles on it to find out, we had some more snow and there is still a slight amount of salt on the roads. I'm waiting for a rain to wash it off before I drive the car some more.

Correction... Gorilla tape It's like duct tape on steroids. Yoplait has too much sugar

and for all the people saying that the fan blows the smoke around,, again, you do a smoke test with the car off.. duh....!!!

A smoke test does work to detect intake leaks, but you do it with the car off. By placing the whole intake system under a small amount of positive pressure with a smoke source, any leaks theoretically will reveal themselves when you see the smoke coming out. You will have to seal off the throttle body opening however, as the smoke will just flow up through the air cleaner if you don't and not get trapped enough to reveal leaks. I've done it. I made one from a "fog machine" I acquired at target for $24 and I used a series of difference size hoses to adapt it to the brake booster port on the intake. I didn't have any intake leaks, but if I pulled off even the smallest vacuum line smoke would come out so it should work as long as you can see all areas around the intake. If you have an intake leak around the bottom of the intake gasket, it could be difficult to see without a small mirror and a light. I do agree however that the propane testing is probably more effective. I've tried all of the different ways to test (carb spray, boost test, smoke test, propane, a similar version of sarah's yogurt cup test, etc..) Take a propane torche, put about 18" of hose on the end of the nozzle, and turn it on with the car running and blow it all over any fittings, gaskets, boots, etc.. do it slowly. It does work good. You can pull off an ac vacuum line to test it, the car will rev up significantly with propane introduced into the intake even as far away as the air intake on the other side of the air filter.

At some point this weekend I'll do a resistance test again on my AFM and give you the numbers for reference. Just FYI, the AFM needs to match the ECU, that's why there is a bunch of different part numbers.

unplugging it would not fix a leak more than likely, It's just an injector basically and will be under the pressure of the fuel rail constantly. If the car runs differently with the cold start valve disconnected, you may be looking at the thermotime switch ? Without referencing the FSM off the top of my head, I believe it is what triggers the CSV, and it has a thermal switch built in so that it does not trigger the CSV after the car is warm.