I am begining to hate my engine, I cant figure out the problems, and more syptoms are starting to appear!!
For starters, I have had to replace the fuel pump fuse 2 times in the last two days.. Both times I was stranded in the road.. Luckly I had enough sense today to take one of the ones from a light.

Next Im having power surges, asside from having almost no power.. I am still having a high idle problem and I still cant get the electronic ignition to work..

ARGG!

if i'm not mistaken, the fuel pump and the heater blower are on the same fuse.
usually, it a problem with the blower and/or wiring to it ...

check yer ground. and vacuum leaks.

forget about the carbs. every single 914 with carbs i have seen lately had at least as much problems as the FI cars.

Andy

Don't get carbs!

What do you mean power surges?

High idle indicates vacuum leak.

If it runs, the electronic ignition must work?

When does the fuel pump fuse blow? I just had this problem last weekend. Two very smart guys on this board steered me straight to the problem. The AAR connection!

Stock fuel pump in the stock location? I'd focus on the fuse problems for starters. Your fuel pump might be going out.

Check vacume leaks, ya ya, I have been doing that for a month now....

I dont have any of the heater suff installed.

I dont have the standard wireing for the fuel pump, spent forever trying to get it to work, but had to run alternate wireing.

I never said a thing about carbs..

My AAR is junk, I dont even have it connected.. Anyone have a working one cheap? Or knowlege of how to rebuild one? ( I am manually opening and closing off that vacume)

Power surges, ie sputters, backfireing, ext.. all the bad things. (though no oil leaks)

I have points in the car now. I have electronic ignition on the bench and tested it and it works, just not in the car.

I blow the fuse when I am leaving an area, ie when the car is accelerating from a park..

Fuel pump stock location (kinda).


Andrew

I know you've heard this before, but I'll repeat it anyway. Start with the basics!

Did you disconnect the wire to your AAR and tape it up?

Sputter and backfire could be dwell or timing.

Blowing a fuse when accelerateing sounds like a wire moving around and shorting out, or something loose.

First off, rip off the injection and clean up the engine bay...LOL

I hate EFI!!! LOL

Andrew, by saying your AAR is not connected do you mean electrically or it's totally out of the car? If it's still in the car and not connected via its wire then it is open causing the vacuum leak. If it is by passed (no vacuum hoses to it but still connected electrically it could still be causing a short whereby poping your fuses. By your past posts I assume (I hate that word) that you already know this (but since I never assume) I figure I may as well tell ya I know what you're going thru. Mine did this too (but it was something else)........ bad injector
bruce

I vaguely remember seeing a car show on tv a few years ago where they used some kind of smoke generating device to introduce smoke into the car's vacuum system (by the brake master cylinder, I think) to detect vacuum hose leaks. I can't find such a device at Eastwood, though. Can you use propane from a propane torch to see if it increases engine speed when near a vacuum hose?

You can spray a variety of things at the joints of an induction system to find leaks, but I generally use brake cleaner or starter fluid. Some things cause the engine to rev up a bit and others cause it to stumble, but any clear reaction means there is a leak. I like brake cleaner because it evaporates completely, rather than leaving a mess. If you are using starter fluid, or any other flamable agent, be careful around headers and open sparks!

Does brake cleaner cause the engine to stumble?

my 40's work juuust fine thank you. ugly thing to say, but it's the owners not the carbs. if they're old rebuild them or try Air Cooled Engineering, acevw@aol.com. get a GOOD linkage, clean your jets, and put the filter in front of the pump.

kevin

Clogged strainer in the gas tank?? Rust in the tank??

Jeff

Kevin, your avatar works muuuuuuuuch better now.

kudos to malmz. he made the first one and fixed it. folks would have gone balistic when things went wacky in every thread.

kevin

When I say accelerating I mean from 0-2 mph..

and just to be clear I am sure that I dont have 95hp, im guessing 70 tops..

I didnt tape up the aar, but I dont think I need to worry about that...

Jake, you mean clean everything like this? The bat tray is new and very purdy


And I just switched TO FI.


Ya know I keep thinking in the back of my head that its an injector, I need to stop delaying and buy an injector cleaner..

As for checking for vacume from places I have only found a small leak from the intake runners,but that is it..

I dont think its the gas tank thing, I just had it out and I cant remember anything specific about it.. I think I shaked it to tell, but I dont think I have anything, I might have even put a magnent trying to get some metal.. dont know, I might check that..


Hope this info helps..

Andrew

You should fix that vacuum leak from the runners... As for your popping fuse, obviously something is grounding out some place; start looking for stray wires. It might be a good idea to pull your injectors and make sure none are leaking and all have a good spray pattern. Also, it goes with out saying to make sure the engine is in good health (valve adjustment, compression, ect.). Good luck.

-Kevin

Andrew, Fix that vacuum leak now!

If you don't think you have to worry about that untaped wire from the AAR, read the thread I posted last week entitled "fuel pump short". Its on page three.

1st point!!


DO NOT USE BRAKE CLEANER TO FIND AIR LEAK!!!!!! Why you might ask? READ THE CAN!! I did just this the other day and my eyebrows are still growing back...THINK FIREBALL!!!

The points or the spark plug ignited the fog of brake clean that I was using, what the hell, I could not find the carb cleaner. BOOM. What the hell was that, then I read the can. highly flammable.....so take your chances, anyone for a car-b-que????

good luck, herb

Glad you're all right but now I just have to laugh! Eyebrows!

that got me thinking ...
do you still have the carb-cam in it?
or did you go back to stock cam? i'm sure you replaced the old fuelpump with a FI fuel pump, right?

just checking
Andy

also the dizzy, right Andy??? Don't Carbs take a different dizzy than FI?
bruce

A related question:


Is there any way to tell, by external inspection, which cam is installed in an engine? Or is it necessary to remove and compare it to a known one?

Joe

The engine wouldn't run without the D-jet trigger points in the dizzy, so he must be OK there.

well DUH! I should'a remembered that.
had a case of oldtimers along wit'a brain fart!
bruce

i suppose, if you knew the numbers, you could measure lift and duration at the rockers ...

Andy

Don't hate EFI. You can hate the D-Jet - the D-jet is very hard to debug because it's all analog - and the only real way to test it's input is to measure all the voltages.

Carbs are in the same boat - you don't really have any idea how much fuel is being delivered apart from subjective tuning.

A decent modern EFI system will output all this information on a computer screen and allow you to tweak all the pertanent values, and thats better than both the D-jet and Carbs.

The D-Jet does run very well for a stock setup though - it was pretty slick technology 30 years ago and I'm suprised that so many cars are still running with it.

As long as we're on the subject. . . anyone have anything to say about L-Jet? I'm eyeballing a 73 1.8 with L-Jet. Owner says it runs good. I guess I'll have to wait until I get a chance to inspect the vehicle (in a couple of weeks) but any opinons on L-Jet, in general?

914s only came with 1.8L motors in '74 and '75.

first thing that comes to mind:
how hard is it to get replacement part if something breaks ???

the PO converted my 1.8 to D-Jet (1.7) and it runs great ...
Andy

Don't tell that to my 75 2.0L!!!!!!!!

Or my 74 2.0 47..

my bad. I meant 74.

How about putting L-Jet on the early, D-Jet cars?

I love my stock Euro 3.2 six.
Just look for an 84-89 911 in a parking lot.
Jack it up undo 6 bolts and it could be yours!!
Just kidding LOL...

The statement, as made, is correct. You are misinterpreting it.

The only years that the 1.8 was available in a 914 were 1974 and 1975.

You have obviously interpreted "Charles" statement to mean "in 74 and 75, the only motor that was available was the 1.8". Which does not appear to be what he meant.

--DD

Im sure the cam is the stock cam, and they just put the webbers on to be stupid...

Changed the dizzy..

Alright, something new.. I got stranded coming from school today, The fuel pump kept blowing fuses.. had to wire the pump directly from the batt and made it home.. ANY ideas?



Andrew

usually, it's the wire for the AAR you already told us wasn't important, so i donno ...

I swapped out my D-Jet on my euro-spec 2.0 (higher compression than stock) for the L-Jet, the car ran great, no issues.

Since I did not have to smog the car, I machined some plastic plugs to fit into the air intake elbow to clean up the look of the compartment and to help rule out chances of vacuum leaks.

What other components share that fuse?

Did the wire get hot that you "rigged" to the pump?

What you can do is rig the pump to go directly to the battery (with an inline fuse !!!!) Put a new fuse in the holder for the pump and see what happens.....the car will run and you have removed the pump from the equation.

I unplugged the aar, and ducktaped the wires, I did this yesterday...



dont know, Dad had to re route the wiring for the fuel pump when we where working on the pump because it was not getting juice no matter what we did.. he wired it from the relay to turn on when the key was on.

I have a late model 2.0 FI, what are you talking about with closing up the vacume ports? I dont quite understand what your talking about..

Thanks

Andrew

plugging up the vacuum lines has nothing to do with your problem, I just mentioned it 'cause that is what I did to eliminate some issues I had when I was trouble shooting my setup.

you could do the same, but it won't solve your fuse problem

You mean the vacume from the aar? cus I open that up for a couple of minutes when i start the car to warm it up and get the idle up faster.. then I plug it up when im gong to leave.. I have a plug on my air box and it conveniently works great! till now....

Andrew

And you didn't think that particular bit of info was of interest in this situation--why??

OK, now--which fuse is blowing? The one for the fuel pump on the relay board? Or the one powering your new relay? Or is it the same one?

Check the old fuel pump wiring, it may very well have been broken. Now it may be shorting to ground. Result: Popped fuses.

If it's the fuse for the new wiring that is popping, check your new wiring.

--DD

Cus I just remembered it

The fuse blowing is the one under the dash.
3rd or so from the right, pretty sure that that fuse is for the fuel pump.

No new fuses installed from the new wiring, no neccecity for it. If it was the wiring, why would it take a month for it to go bad like this? I had it running perfectly (as far as the fuel pump was concerned) for a while.

Andrew

I think(for what that's worth), there may be a fault in your new wiring. There is no fuse under the dash labeled as running the fuel pump(afaik).My books say the third fuse from the right runs additional headlights, and (horn74 and on). The fourth from the right runs the turn signals, Brakes lights, and backup lights. Are one of these circuits going dead as well? Maybe you should switch the fuel pump to a different fuse?

I think I know the problem..

When dad wired the fuel pump, he used one of the points that turned on when the key was on, now I just put in a radio the day before my fuel pump kept blowing fuses.. I think I am over loading the fuse, and since I got the car home by wiring the pump directly to the battery, I am going to have the pump wired to the battery, and I will have a switch for the pump inside the car. This will double as a anti theift device (asside from the car being very hard to drive)

Does this sound right?

Andrew

FYI.
An old trick is to run the fuel pump wire off the hot side of the coil. The first 914 I owned was wired in ths manner ......why, you may ask?

It seems that the fuel pump wire has been known to self destruct inside the BIG wire bundle. It runs off a 25 amp fuse in the relay board....exactly why this wire gets overloaded is a mystery to me. I found this in my 914 yard car. It had fried itself and a few neighbors.

JP, I think I'll try that!

Andrew

I said it was an old trick, not necessarily a good one.
This runs your fuel pump whenever the ignition is on.....also, no fuse in the line.

I run my fuel pump off a fused circuit on the fuse pannel (don't remember which one), then thru a off/on switch. My pump is up front.

The main point I was trying to make was about the fried wiring.

Use a relay switched from the stock location powered directly from the battery! Relays only take ML Amps to trigger!

Jeff