Thursday, September 28, 2006

Fuel Frustration - what in the world is wrong here?

This problem first occured on 8/28/06. At the time I described it as such:

SCENARIO: Fill up fuel tank, then drive.

PROBLEM: Fuel beings to drop quite heavily from the left rear area in front of drive tire, where the charcole / evap canister is located. It will do this until I can put about 50 miles on the car (I think that's about 2 gallons of gas). Then it stops.

I first noticed this last week when I parked the car nose-down in a parking spot (the city is on a pretty steep hill). I ran down the rail and dripped off at the driver front tire. Thought it was the filler neck on the tank.. reparked the car on level ground and after 30 min the drips stopped, until the next tank full.


Since that time I'd driven the car through Oregon, most of CA nad into Nevado (Reno to be exact) without at single issue, just being mindful not to put in more than 12 gallons at a time.

Last night, I got a little lazy. Washing off the windows I lost track of how much fuel I'd added and to my shock, it was at 15.5 gallons by the time I'd come to my senses. Nothing was dripping on the ground at that point. Figured I was OK.

Within a few blocks.. the stumbling started, but was not too bad.

Tonight... it's so bad it's dangerous to attempt to drive the car, but that seems to be the only way to clear out that problem! Instead pulled out some tools and took a look around the front part of the fuel system. This is what I posted to Rennlist, looking for help.




ARG! Put in 15 gallons last night and was treated to a shop full of fuel when I parked it at home. Let it drip out, wiped it up and called it a night (dripped quite a bit).

Took the other car to work today. When I got home, hopped in the P-car, lit off and idled normally. About 1 block up the street it was starting to stumble, like it does when it' 'overfilled'. By the time I got to the parent teacher conference it was running like a pissy little *****. Parked and within minuted.. fuel at the dirver rear wheel. It pissed for an hour, left a huge puddle and then I drove it home. Was OK for a very short while then stumbling, moaning all the way home, nearly stalling several times, and with a ver erratic idle.

Got home and... like a bad case of, something, it was dripping again... before the rear wheel. I'm baffled.

Pulled the little tank on top of the main tank and it had fuel in it. Drained that, wiped up the mess and re-installed. Still have lots of drips from the rear.

I'm perplexed. This is the ONLY thing that's wrong with this car. When I don't overfill it (I just completed a 4000 mile trip in the last 2 weeks) it's a dream. When I forget to stop it soon enough I get this problem, consistantly.

Aside from the poor drivability, it's turning my garage/house into a gas-bomb!

I need to get this sorted out but, I'm at a loss.

Checked for the valve but I don't see anything in the inlet with wiring and opened the filler and I don't see any valve or such in there. I guess I could take some pictures to show what it is I'm looking at here, and hopefully someone will have some helpful hints.

UPDATE:



As you can see in the first picture.. this is no small leak.. it's huge.



In the next picture, the tank I removed is the small flat one on top (entering image from left) on top of main tank. There was a some fuel in it that I drained out.



Last picture is what the tank inlet looks like. This is as much as I can see of it. If I have this valve.. can someone point to where I should be looking for it?

What ws interesting is that the main tank looks like it has a slight collapse.. like there was too much vaccum on it? The top tank looked slighly concave as well. When I removed the gas cap the vaccum did not seem excessive at all, but is that any sort of reliable indicator?


The valve on top of the expansion tank did not have any wires to it (the one near the top middle of 2nd picture).

Saturday, September 09, 2006

Living with a Porsche

Well, sometimes it takes a little getting used too. The oil incontenance and of course, the ridiculous desire to drive the car all the time. Having picked up the car last month, almost on a lark... it's been a love affair that I hope does not end.

In general, I'm a pretty tough sell, unless it's something I want, and even then I'm more than willing to fold up the wallet and walk. The Porsche was an incredible test of my resolve. Saldy, I caved before the salesman could even say boo. After the first two gears I was HOOKED. The car totally sold itself. The salesman just had to fill out the official documents.

Since that day it's been a blaze of tire smoking glory. Well, more fun that glory since I placed LAST in Sports-A at my first event in the car. I beat A LOT of other cars overall but I still came in last by over 1 second in my division. I'd like to blame it on equipment (and to a large degree it is due to some things I want to update) but for the most part.. I just need to learn to drive *this* car!

In the next couple of days I'll have back-posted the race results and thoughts on the experience.

Also in the works is a post on the first update to the car (a new iPod enabled radio) , second update to the car (some new tires since snow-tires are NOT what I had in mind for performance rubber), and subsequent mods made and plan to make (there is a pile of parts on the floor right now and more on the way... here is a just a peak at what's next for the car:



So.. sit back.. relax and I hope you find this new blog of interest. Also, check back in a couple of days to see my re-dated (aka time-maching) posts of those first days of ownership, modifications and first race.

Cheers, and happy motoring!!

- David