Reverting to Normal

Entropy increased. I was being too productive on this project, and the Cosmic Pranks and Pratfalls department noticed and intervened. Two weeks ago, my wife and daughter were in a serious head-on collision in our 2008 Scion xB. Kyrie Eleison, no one was seriously injured. Belt bruises only. But that put me back in crisis management mode. Take care of things at home, take care of the paperwork with insurance,  research, shop for, evaluate and purchase a new car. (The research and evaluate parts are ones that I won't stint on, as they are the only thing that has saved me from expensive mistakes.) Obviously this all takes priority over the Bus, and quite thoroughly wrecked my time-table for a running solution by Christmas.

So, having put the new vehicle on the road and otherwise having slid past the crisis with only bruises to show, I must now re-factor my schedule as Christmas is, well... tomorrow.

The 'revised schedule' has been altered to 'situational' rather than a date. This is because I can't guarantee any sort of time table of my availability to work on it because of horrors like this accident coming rolling down the mountain and smashing my timetables flat. But there needs to be some cut-off so here it is: Money, not time. I have, from this point, $300 to get the Type4 engine running or walk away from it and start directly on the subaru conversion. This cost is for parts, not tools. (So a generic fuel pressure meter doesn't count against it, as it has other applications, but weirdie volksflammermechanik unique to this engine DOES count as it is as much sunk cost as any of the parts that I will buy to put on the engine.)

So prior to being rudely interrupted by almost having my wife and daughter die in a car accident, I had purchased a quartet of 6 ton jackstands and with some quite awkward struggling, got Ferdinand up on to them at their full extension: 24 glorious inches underneath the vehicle, which is 80% arm extension length when I'm on a mechanic's roller. The struggling was because my 3 ton jack, and beefy as it is, only has an extension of 18" vertical. So I did things in two steps: Get all four corners up on the stands, at the 18 inch lift.  Now the tires are nicely off of the floor. Slide the ATV jack (which has a pair of skids eight inches apart) under the tire and lift. The additional extension of the ATV jack afforded by lifting from the bottom of the tire rather than from the bottom of the body, did the trick. 24 inches, free and clear. 

Once up on the stands, I discovered that the only practical way to work on the engine from the top hatch was to stand on a chair behind the Bus, supporting my weight on my gut so that my arms are free to reach in. Very awkward, and made more awkward my unfamiliarity with the design of the engine.

I put the AFM battery on charge, and then went to work on replacing the points. Remember I said that they're in front of the rotor shaft? I need a third hand to hold the mirror. Tried access by the top hatch and I have to reach 'back' to get to it. Very, VERY awkward. Got the screw back into the breaker plate through the points after 10 minutes of futzing with it and couldn't thing of a time when I'd ever had so much trouble on a Beetle engine. Set the gap to 0.45mm, put everything back together, turned the key to run and turned over the engine with my foot switch. Nada. Pulled off the coil wire, held it near a ground point and did it again. Zap-zap-zap-zap....right in rhythm. So...fire.

This puts the onus back on the fuel. And I am starting to suspect that either the injectors are not getting juice, or whether they are getting juice or not, they are glued shut by varnish.

Now I struggle to imagine that ALL of the injectors would be glued shut. So there SHOULD be some fuel getting in from at least one, which should be enough to cause the engine to cough with a partial ignition. But in the spirit of due diligence, I pulled the resistor pack, left hand injector bank (since I'm new at this engine design) and the double relay, took them inside and measured resistances.

Resistor pack came in at 4.7 Ohms, and the injectors came in just over 2 Ohms. Something ain't right here, because all of that is dead on. No shorts to the body in the injector windings. I tested the double relay within my ability to do so with a meter. Fine, though certainly not conclusive. Only way to test that conclusive is in the vehicle.

I have started to suspect that I have missed something with the double relay. Is it possible that there is a connection that isn't configured correctly? Not connected or possibly corroded. That is one of the things that just kills me about this EFI design: it is not as ruggedized as modern systems, as if it was enough to just get it running in the lab, but never test it in the field when it would want to corrode itself.