So, set off for work yesterday morning, 1.5 miles from home the car 'shuddered' a bit. Got to a busy T junction and laughed at the poor lady whose Meriva had broken down at the front of the queue, went round her, turned onto main road, turned off to go up a very steep road, got to blind corner on it, lost all power.
Engine would not start.
No noise from fuel pump.
Had to roll the car backwards around the bend and onto the curb - causing a bit of a constriction but no other option.
Fortunately a mate able to come and tow me home.
Karma is a bitch
Pulled the carpet up and found this... probably a result of the many years of sunroof leaks prior to me fixing them
The screws were all corroded, but they just screw into plastic so I used a pry bar to pop the plate off, it disintegrated a bit in the process, the rust was pretty bad...
Off now though - and I also peeled the rush off the carpet foam - had to peel away some of the foam to make this happen. Looks like I'll need to paint the replacement to stop the tin worm rotting it.
Cleaned off the pump and tank top so I could pull the pump to inspect it - I was thinking it might be clogged - I've had some rough running of late so suspected the injector seals might be failing.
The pump was pretty blacked up, but was from what I could tell the original - so it's done 16 years and 140K miles of service. Not bad. Forgot to take photos! (will do when I pull it to put the new one in which should arrive today!).
Picked up new injector washers & o-rings and replaced them all and also fitted the new genuine injector harness that I had kicking about - the washers weren't too bad but all the o-rings were a bit hard and flattened.
Used my usual method to pull the injectors, 6mm long allen key with a chamfer cut on the 'inside' edge of the short side. As usual, used the injector clamps only to draw the injectors back into the head, this avoids the seats getting cracked by 'ramming' them home. Also because my injectors are black top the washer fit much more snugly than later ones, this means that the washer can be hand pushed on until they bite only - if you try push them all the way home they can distort, doing it this way lets the head press them onto the injector as the clamp is tightened down. Theoretically giving the best seal.
As usual the biggest ballache was cleaning out each of the injector bores - this one is part cleaned: