A Tale of Woe

[brewha]

I woke up early this morning, looking forward to cars and coffee with other fellow cobras owners. Start pushing the wife to get ready faster so we can get a good spot. I run into the garage and take off the car cover in anticipation of a nice 15 mile ride to the Birdhouse cafe. It’s been 10 days of crappy, rainy weather in the northeast and I can’t wait to get the car out of the garage.

We hop in the Cobra, get belted up, turn the key, it fires up for 5 seconds and dies. Turn the key again and again….. Well the battery is well charged that’s for sure. The seat belts come off and I plug in the reader for the Fitech to see what’s going on. P0355 code shows up which is basically a code stating the car did not start after the initial push of fuel. I am now bummed out. I’m now in debug mode for the whole day.

I check the spark by watching the rpm on screen while cranking. The tach on my Fitech is run off the distributor so I know I’m getting spark. I’m hearing loud clicks coming from the Fitech during priming I have never heard before.

I pulled the closest fuel filter to the fuel injection and inspect the filter. It’s very clean. I still spray it out with carb cleaner, compressed air and reinstall it. Now I get my son out and have him prime the fuel injection with the fuel line disconnected into a large jar….. I got 2 drops of fuel. The day is now getting longer.

I put the car on the lift and remove the right rear tire to get to the next fuel filter. After playing with the quick disconnect clips for twenty minutes, dumping a cup worth of gas on me laying under the car, the filter comes out. What comes out of the filter doesn’t look clean. It’s milky with sediments. After my last ride I had filled my Cobra at the same gas station that this car has gotten all of its Sunoco 93 it has ever tasted. They must have had a bad filter on the pump I used and with their tanks near empty.

Tomorrow I plan to pump out a couple gallons out to see if the whole thing needs to be pumped out. I know my walbro pump has a filter on it and hope I don’t have to replace the pump also as that makes it more expensive and a longer job.

Woe is me.

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[KDubU]

Well that does suck big time. Sounds like you may have found the issue. I personally would remove all the fuel if you can. Not sure if you’re tank is full or not as that is a fair amount of fuel to put into a container.

[CraigS]

Yes try to get all of it out. We had an outboard boat motor w/ running problems that I foolishly let go over the winter. Water in the gas does bad things to injectors and any aluminum parts. I ended up paying almost double what I paid to buy the 30 gal of gas to have it pumped out and hauled away to a certified facility. Then it was $2400 to take the system apart, have the injectors rebuilt and replace the pump. You could pump the gas into some clean cans and let it sit a couple of days to see if the crap settles out to the bottom of the can and then use just the clear fuel.

[Mastertech5]

You might try asking the gas station if they have had any other complaints about their gas. I've seen this before from my dealership days and if they've had a bunch of complaints sometimes their insurance will pay for repairs. I would try to run it from a can of clean gas to get that crap out of the injectors, fuel lines and fuel rails asap.

[cob427sc]

I have had this problem occur and it seems to be more prevalent in hot humid days/cool nights when the supplier must get condensation in their tanks. If you drain out the system the water in the gas should quickly settle out to the bottom of your containor making it easily visible. A glass containor is the best. After draining get some dry gas (alcohol) to mix with the gas and absorb any remaining moisture.

[brewha]

So I got the gas out of the tank. I did manage to save some of the gas to use in my lawn tractor (it should run real speedy with Sunoco 93). The first filter was completely plugged so I ordered a new one from Summit and replaced it. I then pulled the fuel pump and it was a good thing I did. The back pressure blew the fuel line off the walbro fuel pump going to fuel pump receiver. I ran to car store to get some better clamps and locked it down. The tank took about 45 minutes to clean out as the sediment had all settled right around the fuel pick up box. I used my endoscope camera to inspect all the corners and find one of the missing clamps from the fuel line. I added some new fuel and it started right up. Looks like cars and coffee will be happening this weekend. :)

[BRRT]

What a mess. Glad to hear you got it fixed.