1st Gen Lunchtable Thread - General Discussion

Are you sure the ECU has 12V? No fuses blown?

On some vehicles I think the injectors are low side switched, meaning the ecu just provides a path to ground when it wants the injector to fire. Not sure if that is the case here.

 

The ECU has power because it ran everything except the fuel injectors when Miguel was here to help me. It ran on starting fluid meaning it had spark, timing, compression, etc. it wouldn’t run without the starting fluid and the fuel pump was working

 

Hmm yeah. dunno. Hard to get deeper without a schematic.

 

I’m convinced I fried the ECU by wiring it wrong. Plus I did a diagnostic step wrong and there was a spark when I jumped the MAF connector. I’m gonna try re-wiring the fuel injectors and see what happens. It can’t get worse.

 

So long as you don't short power to ground through the injectors and fry them too

 

Don’t you love cars?

 

Oh yes. modern mass produced miracles of manufacturing technology.

they're more fun when they're running tho.

 

I agree. I’ve had this car more than a year and I’ve driven it a total of 150 feet.

 

1st gear doesn't count

 

Can you still call it first gear if half of it ended up in the transmission pan

 

was it running at the time?

 

So the story is the car failed smog in 2011, and the owner parked it under a tree and never drove it again. During the 10 years it was sitting rats ate most of the factory harness, so I got the harnesses from a donor car, refurbished them, and installed them in the car. I got the car to run on the original rat buffet harness by fixing some of the places it was chewed, and flushing all the old gas out. I've only driven it around the block, and my friend drove it to the Costco gas station half a mile away. That's all it's ever moved in 10 years, the mileage matches the smog paperwork from 2011 so it hasn't moved other than that. This was all before I pulled the engine and wiring out to repaint and do a light rebuild on the engine.

When it did run, it did not run very well at all. It was plagued by vacuum leaks and would die often.

 

Milages for the taco-

Last 3 months (and 7 days) of 2018:
8,366 miles

All of 2019:
16,850

All of 2020, and to date in 2021:
911

 

@Wulf

 

Aw man, thats a sad way to go for a cool old car. Glad you're clawing it back from the grave.

 

The old owner was technically the original owner, he bought it from the dealer in 1987. But he donated it to Kars 4 Kids and he probably thought it was junked. I bought it from a dude who got it at auction.

I sent a certified letter to the address on the paperwork and he emailed me back. You gotta really love a car to own it for 33 years. He put 240,000 miles on it.

 

Nice. I wonder why he finally gave up on it.

My dad bought the healey in 1967, we still have it. So glad he managed to put it back together, its practically family.

 

Those are cool, they remind me of old jags.

After I sent a letter to the basically OG owner, here's what he had to say. I actually looked up his name, he is a retired electrical engineer and has some patents under his name. That's how I assume he knew how to fix the common issues with the digital dash failing.

 

the classic 'life got in the way' situation . Very cool that you got in touch with him.