I need another car like a hole in the head. I don't have a problem. Honestly, it didn't even follow me home. Matt and I have been running in the Great Beater Challenge for the past few years in his creations (see thread) and this year was my turn to supply the car. Now this meant Matt texting me "great deals" daily for months. Not kidding even a little. This one shows up and I recognized the car. It was owned by one of my former graduate students. I offered to fix it for him...even gave him some parts (which were never put on the car). It wouldn't start or run properly and it was going for a great deal at $600. Sold.
I know it had recently got a new clutch and the rest wasn't bad - extra almost set of tires. I'll let the pictures do the talking. It's got the usual peeling clear coat and rust in the normal locations.
Passenger side is less bad, but still not pretty. I can't go wild on this thing as the contest rules prevent it. I will do a bit of a rolling restoration once things are done.
Here's the butt cheeks - not great, but I've seen worse.
Interior is clean...but it's had hacking done in many places.
Visor clips...always broken.
Why properly attach the power to the ECU? That would be like effort man.
By far the worst part was the complete lack of cleanliness in the engine bay. I've had some disgusting cars in my time, this one was the worst. I also couldn't take it to the car wash as it won't work at this point and I won't work on it if it isn't clean.
Lots of "silicone" hoses. Nice work. "Why won't my Volvo work..." Because it's a tragic mess!
Phase 1 cleaning. I tried a new WD-40 degreaser. Worked good. Elbow grease was required. It was disgusting.
Battery tray is a little rusty - battery positive cable terminal is so corroded it's not really there anymore. In the spirit of the race, I can't just spend $40 on a new cable...but I did spend $4 on a new terminal.
There, that's better.
I got the fuse put back in the correct place and a ring terminal attached. I do have a new wiring harness, but I can't install it until after the race.
This took a day - an entire day of cleaning. Just the engine bay. I'm not counting the chemicals agains the total as we don't have to count "safety" items. This engine bay could have gone up in smoke at anytime.
So what's wrong with this stupid car. The previous owner showed me how he started it...he would just crank it without mercy until it sputtered to life and then would keep it at a high idle until it relented and would run. With the film of oil on the starter, I'm surprised it never burst into flames.
Classic signs of a dead intank fuel pump. The manual says to key the car 5 times and if it then starts, it's the intank pump. So I get one of them on Rock auto - $40. When removed, I found this.
Pump was dead - wiring disintegrated. Ya, that's your problem. I had a sending unit - so JY prices for that.
Put it all together and guess what...the main pump failed in the mean time while parked. Dead. So now the intank is working and the main won't fire. Now, I've got one of those sitting in my stash as well. I decided to just do a full service. It was faster to just take my spare, do the filter and pump and then swap the parts.
I found a genuine Bosch pump with the correct fittings on Rock Auto for $29 - not kidding. The filter was $20 and I had the connector line from a previous 242 repair that it wasn't used on because it didn't fit.
This is what came out - note the aftermarket generic pump with ring terminal wiring. Good thing I had the correct wiring harness.
Maybe don't kink the line when installing the filter.
I had a spare pump - I went with the new one.
Correct - right down to the yellow marker tape on the harness.
Put it all in place and once purged of air it fired right up. Still doesn't like to idle for a second while cold - but I think that's vacuum leaks...lots of those.
So I'm now putting some miles on it. It also needs a OD relay, but otherwise has good power (certainly much better than my old B23E) and the ride is so floaty it's crazy.
Still to come - I've pieced together a complete engine stage 0 from parts I had (timing belt, hoses, gaskets) - so that will get done in a bit. The brakes are grinding (rears) - so I'll have a look and see how bad they are as they don't count towards to total. The rest will wait until after the race.
