Sitrep.
This old barge came in quite handy as I moved house this year.
Battery started to die, and being an auto it couldn't be push started when it increasingly frequently wouldn't start after being unused for a few days...
Then it shat itself at the least convenient moment possible.
Girlfriend_70s and I had gone into Glasgow to have a nosey at some second hand furniture shops, found an idea sideboard and started carrying it back to the car. A few streets from the shop she declared she couldn't feel her hands and couldn't carry it any further. No worries, we'd made it out of the pedestrianised bit of town, so I'd dash off and get the car, drive it over and load it up at the side of the road.
Naturally it wouldn't start. Turned over but wouldn't fire, and with the tired battery it didn't take long before it wouldn't turn over either. Shit. Phoned up a friend who lived in town and he came over and helped carry the sideboard back.
Before we rigged up the jump leads I hopped in and turned the key, fired right up like nothing was wrong...
Drove home, parked in the driveway, shut the car off. Restarted it, no issue. Fine. Left it for 30 mins, went to start it and it was back to turning over but not firing. Pulled a plug out, had spark, got Girlfriend_70s to turn it over while I sprayed some easy start into the intake and it coughed a bit. So fuel delivery issue when the car is hot...
A mate living not too far away has a 240 with the same K Jet injection system and gave me some guidance on how it worked. Found out if the car was turned over and I jammed a hex key into the mix adjust screw on the air intake arm and jiggled it about the car would start and run fine. So you could work around the issue but required two people... We then tested the fuel pressure, which was fine when running but wouldn't hold when the car shut off.
To be fair I haven't spent any money on this thing aside from basic servicing and it's done a fair few trouble free miles now so I figured I'd put in some effort. I started by washing it:
It has lichen growing in the paint which I can't get rid of. My best hope is that be repeatedly washing it with scotch brite (the only thing that'll shift it) after a few decades it'll be back to being metallic grey as it was when new...
New battery was acquired, new wiper blades fitted and the rear wiper motor refitted. Then I cleaned up inside the air balancing flap bit on the injection system, I also re-centred the plate as it was sticking if it dropped down too far.
The PCV system on these is adept at feeding oily gunk into the chamber...
I was certain this would fix the issue, the plate was sticking as it'd expand a bit when warm and ruin the mixture. Nope, made no difference.
So I set about getting at the plunger that lives in the metering head which controls the fuel mix, which could also be sticking.
These weren't for moving so I wrestled the whole unit off the car:
Cleaned everything and got everything moving freely again without actually taking the metering head apart. I've also ordered some new O rings for the primary pressure regulator from a place specialising in, of all things, DeLorean parts.
The fuel pressure dropping is either the failure of the fuel pump accumulator or the pump one-way valve. Hopefully the valve as the accumulators seem to be expensive. That shouldn't cause the car to completely not run though, it'd just require longer cranking to bring fuel up from the tank. That's not the cause of my issue (although it won't help), because we shorted out the pump to run constantly and it still wouldn't fire with the system pressurised.
I also have to fit a blower motor from a 940, as the original one is seized to the point it won't run and is too rusty to come apart, not ideal in winter... And having a beater with heated seats it is a bit silly it's not working when it's currently -3C...