Posted by leo | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on 09-03-2010
The main push today was to finally get the car started. We were not succesful.
Some more work was done on the switch panel.
Gabe filled the tranny with oil… to the max.
I found an air bubble in the water system which allow me to put another gallon of water in there.
Then we tried to get the car started. No fuel pressure. No voltage at the pump.
Missing “circuit opening relay”. Turns out this is the real fuel pump relay, which apparently they don’t want to call “the fuel pump relay”. Added the relay, no luck. Tested the relay, tests good. Tested the air flapper sensor thing, tested good. Relay is getting out, relay is not giving power.
At this point, the team bugged out low on sleep and food.
An electrical engineer buddy of mine spent over an hour on the phone with me reading through the factory service manual trying to understand these circuits and how this relay works. (Thanks chris!) We made a solid step forward. It looks like this relay has two things that can tell it to turn on. The ECU and the air flow sensor. If the air flow sensor is opened all the way up (its just a little flapper) it tells the fuel pump to turn on. I wedged one open with a screw driver and BAM fuel pump fired right up. That means the ECU isn’t sending the signal to the fuel pump relay to turn on.
I tried a second ECU real quick, no luck. Looks like something that supports the ECU isn’t working. That’s going to be a mess to troubleshoot. Luckily the factory service manual has some pages on troubleshooting it. Work for tomorrow.
Pluses from today:
The fuel pump, fuel pump wiring, fuel pump relay, starter, and ignition switch all work. That’s a good step forward.
Minuses:
We still have at least 20 things on our todo list. The pressure is stepping up.
