New Member with an Epic Tale Options

[vmills]

Hi, I'm new to this forum.
My story begins last summer when my friend and I were bored and looking for a summer project. We saw a 914 sitting on someones yard with a for sale sign. We inquired and found out it recently had a fire, but damage was minimal. 1974, 1.8 liter, stock L-jet injection. Lots of melted plastic and some burnt wires, nothing that we thought would take too much fixing. And besides, if things didn't work out the way we wanted it to, it would be a good learning experience to investigate the problems of the car and fixing them. So we bought it.

Long story short, we cleaned the engine out, installed a "new" main engine bay wiring harness, new coil, new tubes, new fuel hoses (which weren't metric and were too big, probably source of the fire), a new charcoal canister (which had exploded), new air filter, oil change...pretty much fixed it up so that it should run. We did everything except valve adjustments and timing adjustments. We got everythign else straightened out and it was up and running for about four days. It felt like it was running relatively well too. It would start right up and accelerate smoothly through the gears.

Then, not a week after we got it running, I took it out down my friends driveway and got it out onto his street (this is all in the country, no traffic). Started heading up a hill and it seemed to lose all power. I got it turned around, barely, and headed back up to my friend's house. But when we got to his driveway (slight incline), it would have none of it and just stalled. After a few more attempts, the car refused to start. We towed it back up to his garage and it has been sitting there since.

My friend and I are pretty sure that we lack spark at the moment. We've tried new coils and plugs, neither of which have worked. We know that we have fuel pressure, but we're not sure that the injectors are injecting (we need to check this). We're fairly confident that our vacuum lines are all connected correctly and leak-less.

Anyone who can offer and insight into our problems - thank you in advance. Sorry for the lengthy post too.

Thanks