Harness swap semi-successful. It runs but the ECU is retarding the timing (holds base timing with the spark output from the ECU unplugged). My best guess is that it mistakenly either thinks it's knocking, cranking, or making a bunch of boost, and is therefore pulling timing out. More diagnosis tomorrow.
Edit: Couldn't leave it alone- looked again, had two pins in the ECU connector switched. Swapped them and it now advances the timing like it should, hard to tell if the original problem is gone but it runs better. Need to do a lot of wiring tidying before I can drive it.
So. It ran better but not great, so I checked everything and all wires/sensors were ok. The new harness gives me the ability to actually check codes so I tried that- it said it was running lean. So I pulled the plugs again:
Weird. Replaced with new, still ran funny. Out of desperation, pulled the injectors and ripped the filter screens out of 1 & 4. They looked clean:
Reinstalled and...
Much better! I pulled the screens out of the rest of the injectors- there is a 100 micron filter before the fuel rail so I can't imagine that whatever gets through that will hurt the injectors- and if it does, maybe it will be a real failure instead of a nearly untraceable lean condition. I have a lot of wiring to tidy up, many heat shrink wraps were left unshrunk in the pursuit of this issue and the main harness was bungied to the wiper arms for the test drive.
Glad to hopefully be on the other side of this particular mystery.
so, injector filter screens were the culprit. Never would have thought of that myself. Is this something aftermarket, or something that is part of most injectors. I feel kind of dumb for not actually knowing, but I can't say I've ever seen those on any of my injectors.
They're tucked down in there, but most injectors have them. I still think there may have been other issues at hand, but this is almost certainly the culprit for my injectors not delivering the appropriate amount of fuel. Maybe the screens were getting weird when exposed to ethanol?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:
They're tucked down in there, but most injectors have them. I still think there may have been other issues at hand, but this is almost certainly the culprit for my injectors not delivering the appropriate amount of fuel. Maybe the screens were getting weird when exposed to ethanol?
The fact that you were changing injectors and even on the replacement injectors the screens were getting clogged (?) would seem to suggest that there's something in the lines or the fuel rail fouling them. Could it be, theoretically, that you have some rust deposit inside the fuel rail or something, and due to its location the junk is only getting sucked into the two particular injectors?
I think you and Sara earned an ice cream for working through that mess.
In reply to irish44j :
Entirely possible. I flushed the rail out pretty thoroughly with carb cleaner when I had it off the last time, and I can immerse the whole thing in evaporust if it kills another injector. The lack of visible particles in the screen (and the size of the orifices on these injectors) makes me hopeful that any remaining crap will pass right through. I'm not worried about what it will do when it gets into the engine, this thing has already eaten a couple of compressor wheels so it has an appetite for metal pieces anyway.
In reply to paranoid_android :
I agree!
Before:
After:
At least twice this much work needs to be done on the interior stuff but I'm calling it a night. I sure hope all of this practice is making me faster at wiring so I can spend less time on it in the future!
This seems like an appropriate fuse block replacement:
Before:
After:
I know you're thinking it doesn't look much better, but nothing is loose, no wires are getting pulled on, and it's all still easy to unwrap and diagnose. Hopefully we are now at the point where, if something acts up, it can be pinpointed efficiently and fixed quickly. The fuses are all "glow" type so they illuminate when they blow, and the wire colors are, with very few (easily visible) exceptions, consistent colors throughout.
I still think I might laminate a wiring diagram and tape it to the firewall, though 
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
Nice job, good looking wiring is always harder than it ought to be. Great choice on your fuse block given that the Merkur was generally sold as a Sierra in the rest of the world 
Thought the car had a battery drain- turns out my nearly new Optima Redtop is just not holding a charge, since I can watch the voltage drop with nothing connected to it. I swapped the 11 year old Redtop back in and it fired right up, I drove it to work today so hopefully it's still charged when I go to drive home.
You should come to the two day wdcr rallyx this weekend for a shakedown..
In reply to bluej :
Ugh! I wish I had known about that sooner, that would have been worth making the drive there.
paranoid_android said:
In reply to bluej :
Ugh! I wish I had known about that sooner, that would have been worth making the drive there.
It's not too late. I've even got a codriver seat open.. 
In reply to bluej :
Wow, thank you for that offer! I’m signed up to work (at work) Saturday, so I can’t get out of that.
Fun fact: I know more people in the DC Region than the Detroit Region.
Yeah, was waiting for you guys to find that
Car made it home, the old battery doesn't fully hold a charge but drains a lot slower than the newer one. Optima has basically sent me a ridiculous series of quests I need to go on to "prove" their new battery is bad so I'm thinking I may just tell them to eat a big old pile of poop and buy somebody else's product for a replacement.
java230
UltraDork
6/27/19 7:44 a.m.
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
Can you go back and deal with the retailer?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:
Yeah, was waiting for you guys to find that
Car made it home, the old battery doesn't fully hold a charge but drains a lot slower than the newer one. Optima has basically sent me a ridiculous series of quests I need to go on to "prove" their new battery is bad so I'm thinking I may just tell them to eat a big old pile of poop and buy somebody else's product for a replacement.
It seems the newer optima die a quicker death than the older ones. The problem is that the good older ones are 5 plus years old at this point.
I will not buy another optima.
Amazon gave me a full refund when I told them Optima were being annoying about it. I think I'll buy an Odyssey to replace it, preferably from a store so I can plunk it on their counter for warranty service.
Rallycross went OK- photo lifted from Josh's thread:
It was super dusty and slow on day 1, and the car somehow ate its' power steering dipstick, which just completely snapped off and disappeared into the pump. This eventually resulted in a series of leaks in the pressure hose, which I fixed in a tremendously kludgy manner that I can photograph when I put it up on the lift. The car got pretty hot on course, I think my fans aren't as good as they used to be. The parking brake also failed (although the hydraulic handbrake worked great) and the car failed to start once when the starter may have been heat soaked.
Day 2 was a faster, more enjoyable course, but the car kept getting hot (230F) and I kept having to add power steering fluid every couple of runs. But, the car made it through with careful attention- I'm still not 100% sure we're going to enter NEFR yet, need to get it up on the lift on Thursday and make an assessment of how everything fared.
This post isn't as thorough as it should be and I'll probably edit it tomorrow. Here are some cool pictures Brian Battocchi took:
Chris .....has the XR4TI tired you and Sarah out, or are you two in for the long haul(wheels fall off)???
