Seemed like a good idea on paper....

Hell Yeah!

Well, I sat down and figured out I went 22 weeks without a weekend off, so zero progress was made to anything on any of my various projects.

Winter is here now and I am *still* not home and the contractor is trying to tell us the paint he used on the beam that caught fire is 'just as good as replacing it' instead of replacing it like he was supposed to, so no idea when I actually get to move home, so I have no idea when progress will begin to be made. But hopefully next year the young gun is ready to take on some of the weddings and I can dedicate some much needed time to this car. 

Not much to update other than it needs a through cleaning inside and out and needs to be driven. Soon I hope!

So today marks 15 years of owning this car. Its the little goals right?

Maybe this week I will get outside and swap out the ignition coils, and maybe jack up the front end and get ready to tackle from suspension stuff. Really REALLY want to be driving this car this summer. 

It's dusty in here.

Well, another summer has come and passed and I spent it all at weddings, again. And I didn't get to drive this car, again. 

But not all terrible news, I *did* get the ignition coils swapped over, and gave the car a thorough thorough cleaning after years of sitting, it no longer smells musty inside it. Car is under a cover for winter.

I Hope its just fuel pressure adjustments required in spring and front lower control arms to change and *should* be good to go driving and enjoying it. Also need to swap in the 2.0bar MAP sensor once I find a proper pin out for the Hyundai sensor (The Genesis coupe 2.0l also uses a 4 wire map sensor incorporating both MAP and intake air temp sensor in one) and then possibly be able to run at wastegate pressure of 7psi in all 4 gears!

Apparently I am *great* at both working on my cars and posting about it, but contrary to the adage 'no news is good news', nothing has happened. 

I do plan on backtracking on this car a bit tho.

Going to swap in smaller injectors and get it running and driving. I have a set from an 06 300 3.5 which are supposedly 22.8lb vs my factory 21lb, which should work *better* (but not 100% ideal) for the 7psi the turbo pushes.

Trying to source a low pressure boost controller. Waste gate pressure is 7psi, so in combination with the slightly larger injectors and slightly lower boost pressure (5-6psi), I should be able to drive this car as a daily. I do not need to hunt for big HP numbers, I just want to enjoy my car. 

Hopefully its not raining this weekend so I can get grass cut and hopefully get injectors swapped over and get it running this weekend. Still has a list of other things to do on it, but running / driving will be a huge motivator for me.

You got this! Looking forward to seeing this one as a driver!

So...

A month later and I can touch the car again (between rain and work).

I got the intake plenum bolted down, got a battery swapped in, turn the key and...

It turns over and starts, will not stay running. If I feather the throttle it'll stay running but if the RPM drops below 1000 she dies. Not really a sputter and die just flat dies. But turns over instantly and fires right back up. No longer smoking black like a diesel which is a plus but I do not know how old the gas in it is. 

Going to be checking / double checking connections on all the electrical bits and see what happens. It's been sitting quite awhile and there has been a lot of exposure to moisture the past few years so something may have decided it no longer wishes to play ball. 

So last night I dumped in some Lucas octane boost and some fuel system treatment.

When opening the gas cap I was assaulted by the smell of varnish, so the system treatment has some work to do. Also the tank is holding about 1/4 tank now with the litre of treatments I added. Starts up just as fine, runs a bit longer but still dies out (it'll hunt for idle a bit before dying now).

Do we know the shelf life of premium fuel? I can only remember putting fuel in like 6(?) years ago when we first swapped to the way oversized injectors because it ran like E36 M3 and I knew the previous gas at that time was 3-4 years old. I may also have used regular fuel since we were trouble shooting it running poorly. So there is a 1/4 tank of possibly 10 year old fuel in the system. I'm sure thats fine, right?

In reply to DjGreggieP :

I'm running 10-year-old fuel in my lawn mower right now so should be fine....

Edit: I'm actually running 10-year-old gas in my lawn mower. However I don't think I would trust 10 year old ethanol gas to run anything above a single cylinder brakes and Stratton

My experience is that if it fires off and runs a bit it probably isn't due to age of fuel.

I'm thinking massive vacuum leak, mass airflow sensor, or manifold absolute pressure sensor.  Or, one of those sensors connected wrong.

It could also be a coolant temp sensor.

All of those should be relatively easy to diagnose with a voltmeter (I would think).

One of the last things you did was tighten intake plenum.    I'd look there for a big vacuum leak.

She runs.

Finally started, and idled rough and was hunting a bit between about 500-1000rpm but it hasn't run in a long time and I had done new coils and its storage wasn't great (shop leaked profusely and it spent a lot of time exposed to moisture. 

Checked under the hood and the MAP was unplugged but I could have sworn I had plugged that in but I guess I hadn't so I plugged that in and no change in idle for about 10 seconds then she idled up to 900rpm and held. She has a solid 24-25psi oil pressure cold (spec in the service manual calls for idle oil pressure to be 5psi warm), no ugly noises from the engine, not smoking black, blue or excessively white from the exhaust. Put her in drive, idled down to 500rpm and moved forward without stalling. Smooth rolling forward, backward, turning is tight, brake pedal feels a bit stiff but brakes reacted quickly as well (non ABS car this may be normal pedal feel)

She's alive. I still need to do a handful of things so I can drive her (oil change, top up coolant/ transmission, check fuel pressure, replace a few bulbs, hang the exhaust, check wheel nut torque) but I should be driving her before the end of the month. I am excited. 

Thank you for the comments on this to check! The fuel still smells awful, but hopefully it won't take long to burn it off once I am driving.

So, being proactive I wanted to change the oil before running the car to temperature since it had been running *very* rich and wanted fresh(er) oil (I had changed the oil prior to the fire at the farm and it had run maybe 10 minutes in a very rich state).

So I got the oil changed and started the car and shes holding idle at 800-900rpm, making no new noises at the engine, exhaust mostly coming out the very back and its not any colour worth noting, hop inside to check the gauge and temp gauge has reached maybe 1/4 of the way up....

And my oil light is on.

Okay, don't panic. This is why I installed an actual gauge because an idiot light is just a light.

I check the gauge and it's not looking good either, barely over the 0 mark. Ahh beans. 

Shut the car down and go get ready for the wedding I have to work that evening. 

First thoughts was to add additional fluid ( about 4' of 1/2" hydraulic lines, oil cooler, larger capacity filter mounted remotely) And that resulted in zero change in either the light or reading on the gauge. My next thought is to remove the oil cooler / lines and mount the filter back on the block and see if that makes a change.

I am also going to be checking the power supply for the gauge as well. The lights on the added gauges work, but my radar detector (legal here) is not working now and it gets power from the same  fuse panel I added behind the dash, so I am going to pull apart my dash and check the power supply and see if something has gone a miss with that. At the same time I will be replacing my flasher since it continues clicking after canceling the signals and they do not flash at all at this time. 

I wired that fuse panel in about 6 years ago, I can not recall what I tied into for power. I opted for the fuse panel because other wise I needed to have 3 separate fused power leads going to two gauges and the radar detector. This was to make it simpler / neater / less of a fire hazard.

Other notes worth noting, the filter does have oil in it since I was able to verify that by spinning the filter back a bit until oil began seeping out, I need to check the turbo oil feed-line yet as well (which is also the home of the gauges sensor), but I suspect it should be fine as well. Hopefully.

Finally going to have some time tomorrow (Saturday) to look at this again. Still have a wedding tomorrow night to do tho, yay.

I have purchased a mechanical oil pressure gauge to test the pressure going to the turbo. Hoping it's all clear and then I can dig into the flasher replacement and see if there are any visible points of issue with the power to the gauges. Then its just top up fluids and straighten the exhaust up, and double check the wheels are torqued, make sure my control arm is tight and then *hopefully* Sunday i can bring it to town for a cars and coffee.

Welp,

Zero Oil Pressure. Like oil couldn't travel up the line to reach the gauge Zero. 

I guess this winter I am semi pulling the engine and replacing the oil pump and trying again. Since the pan needs to come off I will check bottom end bearings. Nothing sounds damaged, yet anyways. 

I'll be throwing a new water pump / timing belt at it after the oil pump goes in and strongly considering throwing a set of valve stem seals and cleaning a spare set of heads on it as well and having the engine freshened up a bit so I can drive and enjoy it next year, then start the process of actually getting the other engine machined and assembled and ready to be installed in a few years time.  

I got the car into my shop space on Saturday. It was nice to get it in there before the snow comes and it's a bigger struggle to get it in there. 

Next step is to pull the oil feed line and see if I have any oil coming out and if the dummy light is on because sensor died or if there is an actual problem. Hopefully its a dead sensor, if not I guess it's engine out time. 

*IF* its just an oil pump (pan has to come off, so I will check lower bearings) I will throw a pump in, swap the heads (I need to do valve stem seals), timing belt kit and continue with having a turbo for the foreseeable future.

*IF* there is substantial damage to bearings or a lot of metal in the oil I will be building the 3.2 with the 4.0L crank and ditching the turbo so as to make things simple when getting it running again and I will pursue other induction noise options. I've always wanted to do ITB's on something....