The 924 let me down for the first time today. Driving down the highway at 75ish mph and the engine completely loses power. Oil pressure is fine, no alternator light or anything, just no power. Clutch in, 0 rpm, won't bump start or start on the key, so I put it in neutral, jump over 2 lanes, and coast as far as I can on the shoulder. Bumped the key, engine cranks fine, but no life. Of course you can't hear anything with the highway traffic, but I could just make out the fuel pump cycling.
Fortunately it's a narrow car, and I was able to get pretty well off the road surface. No weird noises or anything, and the timing belt looked good (it's new, anyway) plus good oil pressure meant I was pretty confident the engine was mechanically sound. Pulled a spark plug using the factory tool kit, and one of the leads was long enough to ground against the cowl while I reached inside to turn the key. Spark looks great.
You can see where I finally removed all the goop from the missing beltline trim, and where the paint has faded.
While cranking I caught a whiff of gas, so I checked around for a leak, but didn't find anything obvious. I thought I could hear the pump priming, but I wanted to be sure, so I wedged my house key across the terminals in the fuse box to trigger the fuel pump relay. Walk around to the back of the car where the pump is, and gas is pouring out. Found the problem! Hose clamp was loose and the line blew off. I tightened the other clamps while I was under there.
Unfortunately, the car still wouldn't start - it had siphoned all the fuel out of the distributor while I was checking spark, and the battery wasn't happy with all the cranking. I stuck the key back in the fuse block, pulled the airbox open, popped the air filter out, and reached inside to push up on the air flow meter panel. The injectors purging air was audible, and when that was done, it fired right up! Glad it was easy.
Unfortunately in general the car still doesn't start well. I probably need to check that cold start injector and make sure it's working, but I'm not quite sure what's up. It definitely seems like the AAV, which allows extra air on cold starts, isn't set up right. It could use a lot more airflow when cold, and a much slower ramp to warm idle. Of course, that valve is sealed, but I may try to mess with it anyway. Seems like it shouln't be that hard to improve.