July 24, 2011 - It wasn't all fireballs and oversteer yesterday.
Janel spent most of the day running around town in the little car, and seems to have quite enjoyed it. The car still has a tendency to pop out of reverse (and will continue to do so until I pull the transmission to fix it) so she planned her stops as pull-through only.
Until we were driving home from the track. I was leading the way in the Targa Miata, enjoying the view of the little tiny black car in the rear view mirror when she suddenly pulled over the side of the road about a half mile from the house. The mysterious fuel problem had returned.
Checking the fuel pressure revealed the problem - 20 psi. It's supposed to be about three times that. Between the inoperative fuel pressure gauge and the spill earlier today, I (once again) decided the best thing to do was to fill up the tank. And this time, it worked. Instant 60 psi pressure and the car came to life after a couple of tries. We took it home, then ran around town some more with the car at night without any problems.
I'd really like to know more about what's inside that fuel tank. No baffling, that much is clear. But where is the pickup? Janel described the car as losing power after a right turn, which would have sloshed fuel away from the side of the tank that has the pickup. And it just didn't come back all the way. If the extra fuel in the tank hadn't fixed the problem, I was going to see if I could bleed off any air bubbles in the system. But that may have to wait until the car fails again.
As a possibly related problem, the car sometimes doesn't start quite right. It'll pop once and then just crank. Cycling the key brings it back to life. I really want to know what's in that tank, as everything else in the system is something I'd consider to be a known quantity.
The car really does look cool out on the streets, especially from a distance. It gets a huge amount of attention. And Janel quite enjoys the effect of the accelerator. A hot-rodded vintage pickup passed us in traffic, and I thought Janel was going to rear-end it when things cleared. She was quite disappointed that his big fat tires were mostly for cruising up and down the strip.
The picture has nothing to do with driving around town, it just shows the car on track and not on fire.
tags: fuel, testing |
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