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

Before we cleaned the engine out.

After we cleaned the engine out
(we put the cover to the airflow sensor back on)

The car itself

Ballast connectors came apart so no injector firing?

Pull a spark plug to see if you have good spark while turning the motor over.

QUOTE (Bleyseng @ May 5 2005, 08:38 PM)

Ballast connectors came apart so no injector firing? Pull a spark plug to see if you have good spark while turning the motor over.

makes it easier if you plug in an old plug w/ the wire to see the spark....and for the injectors pull them out one at a time place them into a jar and crank to see if they're "injecting"....o and for the valve adjustment job pelican has a nice tech/step-by-step article...and welcome to the club

for all the electrical tune-up parts dont go generic...best to go all bosch...esp the coil..go w/ the bosch blue coil...i got one from the FLAPS and that one went out within a month.

Very nice job with the clean up!!

My first 914(75 1.8) caught fire and I had to go thru the same thing. Good luck with the ignition problem.

ignition was the first thing i dealt w/ when i first got my car (74' 1.8L)...but it turned out to be a bad fuel pump and fuel pressure regulator

As the problem started going up a hill you might have crap in your fuel system and have a clogged fuel line/filter.

Check what has been noted above and see if the fuel pump is working. Pull coil wire and disconnect fuel line, try cranking and see if you get fuel (have a large can to pump the fuel into.

Fuel + spark = Varoom

Very interesting story on bringing it back to life

Did ya check the Points first?

Solid connection to the ECU and it's loom/connector?

Ballast Resistors?

Cap & Rotor good?

I had an instance once where my ECU had come partly unplugged. The car would start up and idle for a few minutes, then when under load it would die. Took me an hour to figure that out

Wecome!!
I think you need to start with the basics...
Loss of power, to the point that you can climb a hill is :
Motor - fuel - exhaust
Motor has good comp ? Fuel in tank = ? sludge, old gas etc
Remove tank and flush, good idea anyways. Hang a presure guage off the fuel rail, drive to see if the volume is a factor.
Do you have a CAT ? after sitting for years then firing them up....they have a tendesy (sp) to block up.
If its OK then lets look at Spark....MeSpark...JoeSpark
You came to the right place...we fix you long time
Later
Joe

Thanks for all the replies. Unfortunately I'm at boarding school now and my friend who has the big garage is at home. I'll send him a link to this thread, but until I graduate, nothing can really be done.

We've actually checked the spark already by pulling the wire and putting an old, but functional spark plug on and cranking. We also have a pressure guage on the fuel line, and we get pretty good pressure while cranking.

How do we know if the distributor cap and rotor are good?

Thanks again