M.fosmo

Unfortunately it's not a slick top. I wish!

karl ruiter

I don't think is is possible to restore, drive, and enjoy an older, neglected 928 unless you are willing to do the work yourself. If you had deep pockets and lived near one of maybe 6 928 master mechanics you could do it, but then why would you be messing with a neglected car? If you take it to joe mechanic, or a self proclaimed German car specialist, or even the dealer, you will just be subject to one stupid, expensive mistake after another. My impression from what you have written so far is that you probably have a lot to learn about mechanicing before you can step into working on this car with confidence and without making mistakes. If you tried to restore it by doing the work yourself the mistakes would be expensive in terms of time and parts, but the labor would be free, and you might end up learning a lot, and some of the skills you could learn could be useful to you your whole life.

Here are some of the kind of mistakes you will make (having been there myself):
-You will come to the wrong conclusion about what is wrong and spend $$$$ trying to fix something that is not broken while the real problem goes untended.
-You will try to fix something that may or may not be broken a little bit end end up breaking it a lot.
-You will start fixing before you assess the overall situation well enough so you will do things like invest $$$ into fixing the fuel system, and then once it is fixed you will discover you have blown head gaskets.
-You will buy parts that are either lower quality or higher price than what your need. For example you might buy the $400 Bosch fuel pump or you might by the $50 ebay fuel pump that will fail, when what you need is the $100 Wabro fuel pump.
-You will bite off more than you can chew and take apart a bunch of stuff and then stop because you feel like you can't ever get it back together right.
-You will lose necessary hardware, and put stuff back together wrong.
-You will destroy your expensive new parts (like running a bunch of crud into a new fuel pump by replacing the fuel pump without draining and cleaning the tank)
-You will destroy new and old parts alike just due to lack of tool skills.
-You will feel like everything is right, so why won't it run still?

But. As long as you have a fire extinguisher handy, a safe way to put the car in the air, eye protection, and a ton of patience, you will learn from all this and eventually end up with a running car, a real accomplishment, and better skills and finding, understanding, and solving problems.

Vasut

SteveG

But it's really driving me insane just seeing her sit there.

Is it sitting outside? Almost any car can be saved and I'm in favor of that, but it is your time and money, emotions are expensive. I guess from the pics it doesn't have a warm dry place; if not, you are fighting a losing battle. Again, just from the pics, it needs a lot . . . and the "replace the easiest/cheapest first" approach may not be appropriate; when it needs so much, you will find yourself taking off new parts to get to old parts.

If it has sat for 2-4 years in Seattle weather, has anything changed in the equation - like more money or time. Good luck.

Wisconsin Joe

Don't guess. Diagnose.

While I tend to agree that it sounds like fuel starvation, find out for sure.

Try some starting fluid (use it very sparingly). See if it will start that way.

Check for fuel flow. You can take off the cap at the end of the fuel rail (Do NOT lose the little ball) and jumper the fuel pump. See if you get flow. There are specs on how much somewhere, not sure what off hand. But there should be a lot.

M.fosmo

I probably should have mentioned that I have spark. I've already done this and it will idle for a few seconds off the starting fluid

danglerb

You don't want to know how many times we hear that about non running cars, and its not a milestone, more like verifying the cord is plugged in on a PC.

When you say factory condition, that sounds like a LOT of money starting from where you are at, but I'm not sure you appreciate how much it is likely to cost to make it a very rough looking reliable daily driver.

Maybe see if you can't get one of the other 928 guys who is local to you to give it a look over with you?

AirtekHVAC

Wisconsin Joe

Good. The fact that it will run on starting fluid also means that you have cam timing, compression, and distributor timing & function.

So you need fuel. And you need it spraying out of the injectors, too (Captain Obvious, at your service )

Use a noid light to check injector pulse. That is very simple, takes a couple minutes and O'Reilly's offers noid lights in their tool loan program.

Check for correct flow at the rail. There are writeups on here if you search a bit.

However, I have a funny feeling that your lines may not be clogged. You said it ran for 15 min, then wouldn't restart. Then that the pump and filter were clogged up. What will plug those will often pass through the lines. But not out of the injectors.

Internet diagnostics are often a joke, but if you have good fuel flow to the rail, my next suggestion would be to clean your injectors.