Work on the miata has still been stagnant lately, as there isn’t much more we can do before we get it on the road and do some shakedown runs. Seeing as it isn’t insured, registered to us, or inspected, I’m not going to drive it anywhere other than around our block. Which means no real shakedown runs. But on the plus side, it’s only week 18. So that’s something.
Cleaning up Wiring
While I was checking some fuses the other day, I looked up under the dash and remembered that there were still a bunch of wire taps from the security system I removed a few months ago just kinda hanging out under the dash. While I’m sure those wouldn’t cause an issue in the next few months, I really didn’t want to have to chase down seemingly random electrical gremlins on the side of the road somewhere when one of these guys decides to touch a ground or something. The solution was easy enough, as I just pulled the old wire out out of the tap, then wrapped the end in electrical tape, then some heatshrink.
Fixing the Fuel Leak
There aren’t that many things left that need immediate fixing on this car. The shifter needs to get rebuilt, but it doesn’t really affect the functioning of the car. We also need a radio and a new paint job, but once again those fall in the same category. The last critical thing on our list was something I first noticed a few weeks ago, and it was a small leak from the 4th cylinder’s fuel injector on the fuel rail. While this probably wasn’t a big deal, as it just looked a little damp and wasn’t gushing fuel onto a hot engine or anything, I still wanted to nip it in the bud before we started driving this car regularly. Fire would not be a welcome addition to this project.
So, I ordered just one o-ring and u-shaped seal (seen below) that actually form the pressure seal for the fuel system. Seems like a pretty simple fix. Upon taking out the fuel injector, here’s what I was met with.
Considering the fact that, like previously mentioned, that o-ring at the end does the majority of the sealing for the injector, having a torn and mangled o-ring is far from ideal and most likely the source of that slow leak I saw. Easy peasy fix, I just replaced those two rubber parts (which were hard as plastic) with the new ones, put the injector and fuel rail back in, and fired it up.
And was immediately met with a vacuum sound and the smell of raw gas. When I looked under the hood to investigate, I immediately saw a massive fuel leak coming from injector number 3. Fantastic. I think what happened was when I took injector 4 out of the fuel rail, I had to wiggle the whole system around, which probably mangled the oring on that injector. Seeing as that rubber is as hard as plastic now, I can’t imagine it took much to cause a leak. So, back to the good people at RockAuto to order 4 seal kits, complete with the knurled spacer bit at the injector end.
A few days later, I got the new seals in the mail and spent about 20 minutes installing all of them. Here’s what number 3 ended up looking like when I took it out.
It’s probably hard to see in the picture, but there’s an obvious tear in the top o-ring. Once the re installation of everything was complete, I crossed my fingers and started the car. Looks like the o-rings were the culprits! It runs great now and doesn’t have the a) massive fuel leak that could catch fire, or b) strange, hunting idle. Maybe there was a small vacuum leak between one of the injectors and the engine block because of a bad seal before?
Power Steering
I’ll be honest, I hadn’t really checked the power steering system at all since getting this car. Judging by the shape the other mechanical bits had been in, I had no idea what this would look like. When I took the dipstick out, I found what looked like milk on the very bottom edge. I couldn’t get a good look into the reservoir with my flashlight, so I hooked up my inspection camera and saw this.
Huh. Guess this needs some attention.
Realizing that I need to get this fluid out and refill the whole system with fresh ATF, while also seeing there was no easy way to get that old fluid out, I decided to just fill the reservoir back up with fresh ATF, then keep flushing it after running it for a few minutes to slowly get all the old milk out of there. I know that’s not the best way at all, but there really wasn’t much in there to start with and I didn’t want to have to disconnect all the lines and try to drain out an oz or two of old fluid. And, lets be honest, this car’s steering is already massively better than my daily driven Subaru, whose power steering just doesn’t work.
Tasks left to do
Here’s what we have left to do on this car until I’m confident enough to drive it for more than 5 minutes.
- Bleed brakes
- Order and install Moss Miata shifter rebuild kit (no money, waiting on this)
- Order radio (no money, waiting on this)
- Adjust parking brake
- Register/insure
- Figure out where all the white smoke is coming from when it gets up to temperature
Out of My Element 