Well, the past 3 days have certainly been an adventure! I’ll just go with a chronological sequence of events…
Saturday:
We left Saturday at 10AM with the intention of making it to Lexington, KY to hang out and see some horse farms and the tracks.
All was going well and Jane was cruising excellently - even with the 3.25 rear gearing, she has no trouble maintaining 75mph speeds for long periods of time. Then round about noon, the engine just… died. No stuttering, no crazy business, just dead. So I coasted to the side of the road and put on my blinkers and poked around some with no indication as to what could really be wrong. We did find that the fuel pump, while it was turning on (we could hear it), was not generating any pressure at the throttle body. Very strange. Eventually after a couple of minutes it ramped itself up (heard change in tone of the pump), generated 40psi of pressure, and we hopped back onto the road.
Drove another hour at which point the pump died again. And then again. And again, with increasing frequency. So we stopped at the nearest town, which was Wytheville, VA. Made it to the gas station (the pump died right in the entrance to the parking lot for a 30 second period, which was hilarious because it was apparently the only gas station in town and everyone was trying to get into it). We then spent the next couple of hours calling around the parts stores trying to find a pump that would work. For whatever reason, none of the parts stores in town carried in-tank fuel pumps (???? why???), and the guys who worked there were less than useless. So I called the Oreilly’s the next town over to see what they had, and the guy there gave me the number of a speed shop to try. The speed shop had nothing but gave me the number of a local hot rodder to try. The local hot rodder unfortunately also had nothing, so I was back at square one. The worst part was that I couldn’t get a pump shipped in to me until Tuesday, which was just useless! There was no way I was going to stay in Wytheville, VA for three days (especially as the local hotels were for some reason a whopping $179 a night). So, we said, “screw it!” and decided to limp Jane the 3.5 hour drive home. At this point it is 4PM.
We started driving and initially the pump was okay (the first 15 minutes). Then it died again. On the side of the road, we found that NOW (this hadn’t happened before) turning on the emergency flashers caused the fuel pump to also turn on in conjunction with the flashes. Didn’t matter if the key was on or off. Ohhhhhh yes, this has now upgraded into my favorite - a whopping big electrical problem! Now, I redid the entire wiring harness earlier this year and put in an AAW harness. But I was very careful not to do something like, say, crossing the fuel pump wire and the parking light wires. You know, things that actually are pretty easy to avoid. But now somehow they are feeding each other. And this is a huge, huge issue.
Anyways, the problem continues to get worse and eventually the flashers stop working altogether, which I guess is great because it means that the pump also does not come on at intervals with the flashers. But this now sucks because it is getting later (7PM) and thus darker and I now have no emergency flashers to tell people that I am on the side of the road. The fuel pump is also dying much more quickly now - at first it was every 5 miles, and then it was every 3 miles, and then it was every mile, and then it was every half mile. Just the worst! So we stop to get dinner at least. The funny part is that I chose an exit that had food only over this long, shoulderless bridge. So we are stopped at this exit with the car off, hoping to let the pump chill out for long enough that we can make it across the bridge when we next start it up. Now that was a silly experience - just staring at a bridge for 15 minutes like I’m about to go into a showdown with my worst enemy. We made it across the bridge though and pulled into the gas station parking lot, where I had had enough of this wiring problem. At this point the lightbulb had gone on - I had had no electrical problems until this point, and I had had the AAW harness in for multiple months. HOWEVER, I had recently had a security system installed… by someone who was not me… you see where I’m going with this.
I opened up the dash and found a gigantic cluster you-know-what of wiring. These people had spliced into some crazy stuff, despite ALL of my wires being very clearly labeled. I had at this point found the source of my electrical problem. But I couldn’t see anything immediately totally wrong, so I performed my second favorite repair procedure (the current favorite being “kicking it until it works”): rummaging around. I shoved some wiring around, having exactly 0 idea what I was really doing, and magically the flashers started to work again and the pump worked when it was supposed to! What great success!
From there we booked it home the last two hours with nary a hitch. Whatever I had done had solved my electrical problem. Ta-da!
To recap, I had now driven 9 hours in one day to end up exactly where I started, but now with an unknown electrical problem. Joy.
Sunday:
(this paragraph full of technical stuff) Today was the reckoning day. I pulled everything out of the dash and cleaned up the wiring that the “security” people had done. Security, my ass. I also completely rewired the pump under some paranoid suspicion that the Powerjection EFI was doing something crazy and not giving the pump enough voltage (remember, the original symptoms were a pump that was running funny and creating no pressure). Before, the Powerjection powered the pump. Now I wanted the pump wired with 12V power, with the Powerjection triggering a relay. And I wanted the pump to be on a larger gauge wire. Because I didn’t want to unpack the car but I did have to run a new wire all the way to the back of the car from the engine bay, my dad and I devised a series of solutions to drag the wire through (mostly by hooking things with coat hangers). Somehow that was actually successful and so the pump was wired. We got a relay, hooked the pump into the AAW harness (which conveniently has a “fuel pump” wire), and rewired the rest and we were golden! Only had a bit of time to take her for a test drive before we had to go to bed but everything seemed ship-shape. Still furious about the security wiring, but the problem was at least fixed and we didn’t even need a new pump!
I shudder to imagine that I would have spent three days in Wytheville, VA at an expensive hotel room to find out that a new pump didn’t even solve our problem.. that would have induced a volcano-level amount of fury, I’ll tell you that.
Monday:
Well, now instead of getting to go to Lexington with a nice relaxed drive, we had to do a 13+-hour straight run to Missouri to get to my grandparent’s house. Joy! We left before the crack of dawn at 4AM. My dad started the day off driving because I am totally useless between 4 and 6AM (as are most people, to be fair) and before we knew it 5.5 hours had passed with no trouble at all!
Here’s a shot of the last East coast sunrise Jane will see for quite some time:
After 5.5 hours my dad was ready for a nap so we swapped off and I drove for a bit. Made it about 2.5 hours til - surprise! - the car died again, just when we had been lulled into a false sense of security. Hmm. By now I had become an expert at being on the side of the road and diagnosing this problem, having done it at least 25 times 2 days ago. The pump was doing the same thing as before - turning on but making a funny sound, and not making any pressure. Now this pump was an almost-new Walbro that my friend had given me, so it didn’t make sense for it to be dying already. But danged if it wasn’t. Because of the new wiring we were able to rule out low voltage and the Powerjection system as the cause. We knew that the pump would always have 12V as long as the Powerjection was triggering the relay. And it’s impossible to only partly trigger a relay. So, we concluded that the pump was just going bad.
Start adventure #2 in which we made friends with the parts store guys in Lebanon, TN. We went to the local Carquest and the service guy there (who never gave me his name, unfortunately) was INCREDIBLY helpful. We pulled pumps left and right looking for a stock pump that would work for me - inlet, flow rate, and pressure had to be right. Unfortunately, their computer and the Internet was being pretty useless in telling us about the flow rate on the pumps. One pump’s flow rate was listed as “27”. 27 what? We have no idea. Gallons per hour, liters per hour, gallons per second, who knows. Eventually our new friend said “screw it” and called “his guy”. Life lesson: someone always knows a guy. You should always call that guy.
Turned out he was a young dude who raced a lot and did quite a bit of hot rodding. He said he had a Walbro pump that he pulled out of his racecar a short time back (swapping it back to a carburetor). We said “bring it”, he brought it, I gave him some cash, we shook hands. I was now in possession of the thing that would (hopefully) get me back on the road for good.
The Carquest guys (again, above and beyond, just the greatest people) opened up their warehouse for me to bring Jane in to work on her out of the heat. My dad and I tore down the trunk in record time - probably 10 minutes flat, which was super impressive considering that we had that thing stuffed full of camping gear. It was then a simple 5-minute job to plop in the new pump, and another 10 minutes to put the trunk back together. She fired right up, which at this point is not a ringing endorsement of functionality, but at least nothing was leaking or immediately on fire. I said goodbye to my new friends and we were back on the road, now with a racecar fuel pump.
As for how Jane is driving on the road, she is just perfect. She’ll turn 3200rpms all day long at 75mph in the heat with the A/C on and not get a lick above 210*F. The rack is very steady at speed and there isn’t any wandering or jerking around, except when I get grabbed by the draft made by semis or bad crosswinds in the mountain, neither of which I can do anything about due to the aerodynamics of the car. Even then the car is very steady. The rear suspension is… well, it’s trying. Honestly there is probably upwards of 300lbs of extra stuff over the rear axle right now, and the car is doing a pretty good job of acting like a chopped hot rod (that is, she is sitting LOW). I’m glad that I put in the adjustable rear shocks as I was able to crank them up a bit to keep bottoming out from being as much of a problem over big bumps. Won’t improve the ride height of the car, but at least keeps the alarming BANGs down to a minimum! Front suspension is perfect. The interior is EXTREMELY liveable for two people thanks to the addition of the console and the cargo tie-downs. No hot feet, no hot air coming up through the transmission tunnel. All of our stuff is right there behind us but nothing rattles. My only complaint is that the fuel gauge only works half of the time, which is kinda annoying sometimes - mostly I just fill up every 200 miles just to make sure. Oh, and mileage has been getting better and better as the trip goes on. Not sure if I am getting better at not driving like an ass, or if the EFI is tuning itself out better for highway driving. Either way, I started the trip on Saturday with a fuel mileage of a whopping 13mpg (AHHH!!!) and at the end of the day yesterday my mileage was up to 18.5mpg. Typically I run closer to 20mpg combined, but I am willing to accept 18.5mpg because of the extra load, fast highway speeds, A/C, and distributor badly needing a recurve (the 20mpg was on a brand new dizzy, which of course died on me a few weeks back so I put back in the old 289HiPo dizzy). I believe the 13mpg was partially caused by the fuel pump’s stupidity if fuel pressure was fluctuating, but who knows. Either way, it’s not low anymore so I am totally happy.
The odd thing about this car is how time seems to pass when driving it. I drove for an incredibly long time yesterday and it felt like 3 hours. I can’t figure out if I’m time traveling, or if the car is releasing a calming sedative with the exhaust, or what. But it is the easiest thing in the world to get in that car and just drive. When I’m out of the car, I’m worried about things - you know, like fuel pumps dying - but when I’m driving, there is not a thing in the world that could bother me. It’s like entering a total zen state. So, I guess I must have done something right when I built her.
With that, I’m signing off - I’ll leave you all with some pictures of our drive. Stay tuned for another update from somewhere further west later this week!
Cool tunnel in the NC mountains somewhere:
This is not me:
This person really likes Jesus (not sure how Jesus bumper stickers will help you get into heaven, but they seem convinced):
Kentucky!
The flatness of this land tells me I must now be in the Midwest:
Actual Hell's Angels! (did not think they actually cruised around doing Hell's Angels stuff... silly me). They came by me in a huge pack and cut right in front of me, kind of scary to have a biker go around you and cut right in 2 feet in front of your bumper:
A cool suspension bridge over one of the big rivers:
The end of the day is the best time to be driving:
Three guesses where I have been... and the first two don't count:
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