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Leaks, some fixed, some maybe not so much

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Darrell_Walker

Darrell_Walker

Jedi Knight
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First the good news, my new FI hoses and clamps seem to be doing their job. I
do have a couple of questions. First, I cut the hoses between the injector
and the fuel rail the same as what I took off. I didn't pay much attention as
to where the fuel rail sat before I took the plenum off, but after putting it
back together, the fuel rail is right up against the the plenum (actually the
extra air pipe). Does anyone know where the fuel rail should sit in relation
to the plenum and manifold? A picture would be great. I don't think there
will be any problem where it is now, but if I did it over I'd probably make
them a bit shorter. Which brings me to my other question, what are the odds
that I ought to have my injectors cleaned/rebuilt? I don't have any problems
that I know if with them, but that doesn't mean they are all flowing the same.
I use good gas, and plan to run some cleaner through from time to time.

Now on to the leak that isn't fixed. I'm still having problems with venting
coolant from the overflow. So I borrowed a coolant system pressure tester
from AutoZone. First, I found that the cap that came on the car (marked as 15
lbs) would only hold 9 lbs. Then I tested the cap I replaced it with about a
month ago. It is marked as 16 lbs, but would only hold 11 lbs. So that is at
least part (if not all) of that problem.

I also pressure tested the car's system. I held 16 lbs for about 20 minutes,
no sign of losing pressure. I also ran the engine a bit with it connected,
and there were not any spikes on the meter. So that looks good. But the hose
connection at the top of the radiator started leaking again (I assume since it
was seeing more pressure with the tester than the cap was allowing). How the
heck do you get to the clamp on top? With the A/C compressor in place, I can
just touch it with my fingers, but couldn't get a screwdriver on it. I tried
with a long extension from underneath (actually several extensions), but the
angle was wrong. My son managed to get another half-turn on it, and that
seemed to stop it (or the stop leak kicked in).
 
The trick on those clamps is first to position the head in a direction that you can get to them later. Second is to make sure the clamp screw has a head that you can fit a socket onto and not one of the ones that are round and will only take a slotted screwdriver. I had to remove one once by duct taping a screw driver to a long piece of pipe that I could turn from under the car. I've never worked on an 8 with FI. The stock carbed ones are tough enough to get to everything. That's one of the pluses to modifying these cars- accessibility. Extra HP, better fuel economy, and better reliability also helps.
 
Thanks, guys. It does have a hex head, and is positioned in what I think is the only way you can get to it, from the bottom. But you need about a 2-3' extension, probably with a swivel in the middle.

Or maybe if I had the car on a lift, I could reach up from underneath.

I sometimes wonder if all the labor problems they had early on was just from normal sized humans that were forced to build these. Perhaps they found some small-limbed elves to work on the later cars!
 
You can work on this
 

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Well, I don't have any big mods in my immediate plans. My engine is dead stock, except that I did remove the air cleaner box and hoses and go with a conical K&B filter (mostly because I was having a hard time finding the filter for the original box, but it does make a bunch of room on that corner of the engine bay). Benefits of getting a car from a state with strict smog inspections!

In particular I want to keep the A/C, not so much for summer, but for winter demisting. That is probably the biggest obstacle to getting to the clamp.

But the good news is that either the bit my son was able to turn it, or the stop leak is working. I also put (another) new radiator cap on, and took a drive at lunch, and everything seems to be working as it should. And I hit 500 miles that I've put on the car now.
 
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