Replaced my Engine, thanks squirrels!

[TellarHK]

So, for the last few weeks my Q has been acting somewhat funny. Throwing rare (once every few weeks) injector and knock codes, increasingly common idle problems, and some stalls that we determined (at the time) were caused by cheap gas I had to buy on a trip back from Sacramento a month or two back. Things weren't great with the car and I knew it, and we were doing little things here and there to check on it and see if we could narrow it down as there's no dealer or known-good mechanic anywhere in town.

I went to take it to go grab lunch yesterday, and it felt like it was going to stall out just pulling into the street. The RPM's were all over the place, and there was just no power whatsoever getting to the wheels. I pulled a U-turn and parked it back at the house. It was starting to look like a fuel problem, and my partner and I replaced the filter which hadn't been done in a few years. It didn't seem all that bad, and the stuff that came out of it was fairly clean even after pushing air through. We fired it up and things seemed slightly improved. But, we decided we needed to get it to a mechanic - any mechanic - because we have a drive to Vegas scheduled for next week, where we're flying cross-country from. That's an 8 hour drive, and the Wrangler and 300ZX we have aren't ready for the road for one reason or another.

Today, I got it into a local place that I know almost nothing about other than location. The people I've spoken with seemed knowledgeable and decent with explanations, though insistent at first that the car used ODB-I. I left them a netbook with Conzult on it, just in case they needed it. We thought it was likely to be the fuel pump, and had already scoped out possible sources for a replacement that we could get overnighted.

Then I got the phone call telling me the fuel pump seemed fine, but the wiring harness looked like mice had chewed on it and filled parts of the car with sunflower seeds.

Well, that means the possible source for this goes back nearly three years. When I first had the car sent out from Maine, it ran a little more sluggishly than I'd remembered. So, I popped open the air filter housing and - no s*** - vacuumed out -quarts- of sunflower seeds from the intake. They nearly filled a sizable vacuum cleaner. My mother back home had squirrels in the yard - rare things in my part of Nevada, comparatively - and they were always taking birdseed and hoarding it.

So now I'm just hoping my car's not going to be too badly damaged, and we're already into $500 in labor just to try and get a diagnosis on the problem. They're pulling things apart to get at the wiring harness tomorrow, and hopefully that'll get me some kind of definitive answer. Then I just need to hope we can find the parts we need. Money's a pain in the a**, but it's available. Parts, I'm not so sure about.

Also, I'm not too happy with IOS right now. Every time I've contacted them about a part I've seen priced on the website over the last couple months, I get different - higher - prices than the website. When I was looking at fuel pumps, the price the site quoted was something like $259. On the phone, it was $308 or something like that. That's not an inspiring thing to have happen, particularly since I've had good help from them in the past up until this year. (Prices on shocks seemed to jump compared to online when I called to order a few months ago, too.)

[OwnerCS]

Not long ago I found a varmint had chewed up my knock sensor harness. Only a tiny strand of wire continued to make contact. I got a new harness and took and extra steps to wrap it with fire retardant material and conduit to varmint proof it.. :-)

post5754205.html?hilit=varmint#p5754205

[TellarHK]

Fortunately, the place I live now doesn't seem to have a big critter problem. Plus, the car stays in an attached garage which I keep free of any openings for critter invasion.

I heard back from the mechanic today, and it looks like things are probably less catastrophic than I thought. Compression on one valve is weak (100 instead of 175) and it looks like two of the injectors are hosed and need replacing. Other than that, they're still looking at it. I should get an estimate and have a plan to get her back on the road tomorrow morning.

[BadQ45t]

Well you know from your 90' Z that keeping a good car on the road doesn't happen automatically. You do need to have a limit to your patience on how much your going to chase. Question, are you the original owner for the car, or had it since mostly new. That for me with my cars that I have kept until they were older gave me confidence to know i changed fluids regularly, did regular oil changes, etc.

if you gives you any peace of mind, my 1984 300ZX runs very much like it did when it was new, not by accept mind you, I spent 2-3 times over 1,500 bucks on it to keep it up and running perfectly.

You've gotta make a business decision, keep putting money into this car to keep it running right or give it up and find something new.

[OwnerCS]

Fortunately, the place I live now doesn't seem to have a big critter problem. Plus, the car stays in an attached garage which I keep free of any openings for critter invasion.

I heard back from the mechanic today, and it looks like things are probably less catastrophic than I thought. Compression on one valve is weak (100 instead of 175) and it looks like two of the injectors are hosed and need replacing. Other than that, they're still looking at it. I should get an estimate and have a plan to get her back on the road tomorrow morning.

Two of my injectors failed within a few hours last summer. I figured since I had to pull the plenum, I might as well replace them all. The original set lasted almost 20 years, so I wanted to go with injectors that can handle increased ethanol percentages that may be in our future.

It might be worth looking into Deatsch Werks in OKC for an injector refresh.

Here's a picture of the rails with new BWD "black dot" injectors below.

[TellarHK]

Thanks for the responses, folks.

I hadn't posted in a while, because it took me a little time to decide what I was going to do. Finances aren't great, but they're good enough to have been able to make the decision as to what the next step was going to be. What it eventually came down to was either dropping the $4000+ estimated on the Q, or using it as a down payment on something else.

Well, I wasn't going to let my Q go without a fight. And ever since I agreed to have the shop do the work, I was wracked by second thoughts. But in the end, I picked the car up today post-repair.

The $4100 estimate I received from the shop to put in a new junkyard engine was fairly good, and it came in at just over $3800 when they completed the job. They can't tell me the mileage on the replacement engine, but it seems to run quite strongly and without any noticeable problems. In fact, the car seems to have more power and throttle responsiveness now than it ever did before. It's entirely likely that the squirrels screwed up more than I thought they could.

As far as being an early owner of the car, I got it from my parents who purchased it off factory lease. So the last 14 years have been well documented, at the very least. From things found under the cushions, it appears to have been a company car for someone who operated a winery in the San Joaquin valley. So from all indicators, the car should have had a nice and quiet life. I strongly suspect I'm the first person to ever even listen to funk and heavy metal on the stereo in her.

Those new injectors look damn nice, and if there was any way I could afford those I'd have gone that way. Unfortunately, I've just got to cross my fingers and hope for the best for now. The 10% ethanol around here isn't great, but I never skimp on the good stuff.

[elwesso]

3800 installed for a new engine isnt too bad at all! Hopefully that works out pretty well, you should have mentioned it bceause theres a handful of stuff you always wanna do a few things while the engine is out of the car, namely front and rear seals, valve cover seals, etc...

DId they just replace the engine because of the weak compression? Theres a few things I would have checked before settling on a replacement, but whats done is done!

BTW mileage isnt really that important on used engines, as long as it looks clean internally they should be good to go. For instance I'd rather have a really minty looking engine with 150k than a dark nasty colored one with 50k

[TellarHK]

3800 installed for a new engine isnt too bad at all! Hopefully that works out pretty well, you should have mentioned it bceause theres a handful of stuff you always wanna do a few things while the engine is out of the car, namely front and rear seals, valve cover seals, etc...

DId they just replace the engine because of the weak compression? Theres a few things I would have checked before settling on a replacement, but whats done is done!

BTW mileage isnt really that important on used engines, as long as it looks clean internally they should be good to go. For instance I'd rather have a really minty looking engine with 150k than a dark nasty colored one with 50k

Supposedly it's in good shape, but it's not very clean on the -outside-. I suppose I can't complain though, as it does run quite a bit better. According to the shop, at least a few of the injectors were shot, and one of the cylinders had a hole in it. I had gotten an estimate that started at around six grand for just servicing what was wrong with it, with the caveat that it could have gone a lot higher. So, engine swap time!

And unfortunately, this pretty much tapped out my available funds so I couldn't have done much else "optional" with any kind of significant price tag right now. If it dies again, it's going to have to spend some quality time in the garage while I drive my Jeep and save up to do anything else. The shop says I need a wheel bearing, some steering bushings and an alignment along with a transmission service, and I'll be trying to get those taken care of in the next month or two