Guy

Great to hear! That's persistence! Good job.

I like to think of Gremlins as personality

linderpat

Great story!

skpyle

Wow...that's an ordeal. Glad you got it together and made it to SITM.

Bleeding...ugh. Not looking forward to that. I am going to replace the master cylinder on the Red Witch while I am in there. I have a power bleeder, and hope it will make short work of the bleeding.

Keep on keepin' on, Brian!

medipedicman

Thanks Men

Here is the official post trip report.

After the fun run I felt like I was on 1/2 power. Limp mode.?.?.?
The drive back home through the mountains was great but..... I was able to test the windshield wipers for most of the 4 hour drive. It is harder to notice and/or observe a loss in power when you are car number 10 attacking the gorge at 25 MPH. I am sure that was a blessing because we made it home safely.

1st gear and reverse were very crunchy in the parking lot and on the fun run. You would have had to been on the fun run to know why I would be testing first gear multiple times during the run itself (construction). This symptom stayed consistent for the duration of the trip home. Keep in mind that we installed and bled the new master cylinder just 45 minutes before making the trip.

So this week I had a few things to address:
1/2 power
misc electrical gremlins to include no side marker lights on drivers side and ambient heat.
re bleed the clutch.

I tackled the electrical first. Thursday I pulled the CE panel and removed all fuse and relays and cleaned connections and soaked with DeOxit. I was in no hurry and things progressed into the night. I ended up re installing the whole thing and then testing some of the lights and such. Everything remained in the same condition as before the cleaning.

This morning I bled the clutch some more. I probably only removed 3 OZ of fresh and clean fluid and hopefully a few pockets of air for good measure. I cranked it up and let idle for a few minutes. The angle of the car in the garage allowed me to inspect all of the spark plug wires for fireflies and I am happy to report that I saw none. I turned it off and checked the oil and discovered that I was a quart low. After topping off the oil I considered why I might be at a loss of power. I remember us looking at the vacuum lines while at the show and prior to the fun run so just for the heck of it I tried to bump the distributor. It moved freely...... I dialed it upwards towards the driver and the tone of the engine improved significantly.

Time for a test drive. I only did the 1/4 mile lap around my street so rpm's were at or below 3000 but it seemed to have regained some of its pep. I started and stopped several times to disengage and reengage 1st gear. It was like butter. I hope that it lasts. I did not have my glasses or my wallet so I thought it would be better to call it a success and go for a more proper test drive later in the day.

Have a great weekend.

skpyle

Glad you are making progress!

Good job being thorough.

AirtekHVAC

Keep digging buddy!

medipedicman

Great news. I have been studying Dave McKensies' thread on reduced power and that put me on the injectors.
Last night as I was getting into bed I remembered that as we were working on the blue hose we noticed the injector wire on #8 was very loose and had a broken plastic clip. It would just pull on and off. So this morning I ran down and pulled the air tube to inspect the connection.
# 8 was secure but I noticed that # 6 was completely unplugged.
I hope that explains all of my loss of power.

That is great news but........ now I need to find out if those clips are serviceable or if the harness needs to be replaced.......... or if one of my engineering friends has an alternate plan for securing the injector wires to the injector.

skpyle

Excellent!

I don't know if the clips are serviced separately.

I got a set of 8 new injector plugs with wiring pigtails and better clips from Roger for reasonable money.

However, I got this link from Rennlist 928 sometime in the past.

It is for injector plugs and wires. Just cut off the unneeded adapter plug at the other end, and splice into your injector harness:

medipedicman

Thanks for the link Seth. Is it just the two wires per injector? I think I could do that. The driver side seems easy enough but I might just leave the passenger side alone for now. There seems to be a whole lot more to work around over there.

drscottsmith

Yep - as Seth suggested I replaced all of my injector connectors when I had the top end apart for refresh as several broke. I just used Roger's replacements and spliced them in, soldering each one and then using heat shrink on top and wrapped with tape.

I don't like the wrapped with tape part, so when I pull the front engine harness to rebuild I may also pull the entire FI harness and redo it as well.

There is a method to pop the pins out of the old plugs and then reinsert them into the new plastic plug housing (thus avoiding the splice), but the little tool that you use to get the pins to release is a bear to use so I just spliced.

You are making great progress!

-scott

skpyle

Scott, I spliced as well for the injector plugs. Not too horrible. Used lots of heat shrink, though.

Brian, yes only the two wires per injector.

Tip: a heat gun makes the brown loom covering the injector harness, and the rest of the harness, softer and easier to manipulate/move around.

AirtekHVAC

Brian, I bought some at a very good price, but not have installed yet.

ill send you a pic and the info when I get home on Thursday

medipedicman

After reinserting three of the four injector wires on the driver side.......( yes, three of the four were not plugged up) the car ran like a champ. They must have vibrated or worked their way out during the trip to the mountains. There were two distinct points that I noticed a loss of power during the trip. One on the way up and one just prior to the fun run. I guess it is possible that one or more were just loose and sometimes had contact and other times not because until the drive home it was barely noticeable.

I am sure that I did not do myself any favors with the technique used to remove and insert the drivers side air tube. I was always more concerned with clearing the strut brace rather than the sensitive electronic components on the bottom side.
With the rush job on the blue hose/master cylinder and pulling them off again in the mountains to look at vacuum routing I am sure that I did myself in.

Either that or Ron wanted to play a joke on me during the fun run and forgot to fix it before I left,lol.

Parts are on order and I have all of the other stuff required to replace the ends.

drscottsmith

If Ron played a joke, then the karma bug bit us during the fun run when my pumpkin hit the ground coming off of a bridge! I have been wondering about that - haha!

-scott

AirtekHVAC

I would not have done that to my buddy! Although the photo of me under the hood is quite incriminating. It is well documented that when I fix 82's, they no longer run......