kampman's 245 turbo revival and restothread

New to me fuel distributor showed up. It went straight into the mineral spirits bath. It's dirty and the plunger is also stuck but comparing it to the one that came out of the car it's clear that it hasn't been Elroy'd.

Nice job starting to go through this thing. I know people say it’s very specialized to work on these cars but great to see to you going right at it!

Thanks, I may yet eat my words but I think K-Jet isn’t that weird, it just requires a different diagnostic approach than EFI. Speaking of which I need to get the parts to build the TB K-Jet tester...

The plunger in the replacement fuel distributor already freed up and the bore and ports look clean so I think I’m just going to send it for the time being, if it doesn’t work right I have the rebuild kit in reserve.

Pulled the intake manifold and the fuel injectors last night to get a better look at the wiring. I've got my work cut out for me. The wiring definitely suffered the brunt of the damage during the fire. It was nice to get in there with a shop vac and suck up some of the dirt and dust at least.

schwoo...glad you are getting that cleaned up.

Messed around a little more this weekend, got the fuel injectors disconnected from the lines (PB Blaster and patience FTW) and replaced the enrichment switch on the firewall. The existing one was well done.

I'm in the middle of pulling the intake manifold myself. Just curious, but how did you handle the throttle body & its linkages? Did you separate them from the intake and then take them out one-by-one or did you just keep them on the IM, disconnect the linkages, and pull the sucker out of the car?

^Probably easiest to leave the throttle body on. Disconnect throttle spool arm from throttle body, then remove the bolts holding the spool to the manifold. If your car had the non-cruise spool, then you can just unclip the cable and remove the end from the spool.

-J

I just took it out as a unit, I didn't remove the throttle body. Someone who had worked on the car in the past had already disconnected the throttle cable and kickdown cable but if they hadn't I would have disconnected those. I don't see why you'd need to break it down any further than that. I left the IAC motor and hoses attached too.

I poked around a bit more over the weekend, found a few more melty bits. I'm going to rebuild the firewall fuel lines with new nylon tubing, I originally thought that the return would be the only one that needed work but upon closer inspection the supply line has a burnt spot on the back too and I'd rather be safe than sorry. The insulation on the body harness is generally in good shape but I found a couple places (wiper motor, ground wiring) where the insulation is crumbly, gonna have to fix that up. I bought some NOS injectors too, judging by the boxes they'd been on the shelf for a while but they should still work OK.

Replaced the kickdown cable over the weekend. The fluid looked good and there was minimal gunk in the pan so I'm optimistic about the condition of the transmission. The dipstick tube even came loose without too much trouble. It's so nice working on a car without any rust on it. The old kickdown cable was melted and it wouldn't move at all so it's not surprising that someone cut the end off. I'm probably going to want to replace the speedometer cable too, it runs through the same area as all the other melted stuff and since the throttle and kickdown cables were both stuck I bet it's a goner too.

I've also been window shopping for suspension parts, seems like the GAZ adjustable shocks/struts are the current hotness?

Just put in an order with Dave Barton so that I can tackle the wiring harness. Ignoring the splicefest on the firewall, the only area of the body harness with insulation falling off is the branch that goes to the windshield washer pump so that shouldn't be too hateful to sort out.

My wiring stuff showed up from Dave Barton and I ordered the stuff to fix the fuel lines from Belmetric, should be getting here this week. I went ahead and cut out the rat's nest of engine wiring from the PO since I have a few things to do on the intake side of the motor and I was tired of having it in the way. I got a new PCV box since the old one was a little melty, it probably would have worked fine but I figured I'd address it since I had access. Whoever had the car in the past must have kept up with the gaskets and PCV system - the block is dirty but it's not caked in oil like a lot of redblocks I've worked on. I also peeled the tape off the wiring over the downpipe just to see how bad it had gotten, of course it's toast.

One other thing - I haven't paid a lot of attention to the warmup/control pressure regulator until now but the one in the car is an 079. Shouldn't an '84 with the enrichment switch on the firewall have a 128? Probably doesn't matter but I'm assuming this one is cruddy from sitting and if I can find a good used one I'd rather get the "right" part.

Every 240 turbo that I've seen has a wiring harness like that. Good for you for fixing it the correct way.

I bought some ratcheting crimpers so I could up my wiring game for this project. They showed up yesterday so I broke them in by fixing the wiring I posted above - I used Dave Barton's connector pigtails and I'm really happy with the results.

The driver's side 8 pin connector is going to be more challenging though - whoever "fixed" the wiring in the past just crimped the engine "harness" directly to the body side wiring in that spot instead of using a connector so it was pretty mangled. I pulled the body harness into the driver's side footwell for better access, and I've tracked down all the wires that should be in that connector except for one. I can't find any trace of the gray wire that connects to the block temperature switch for the lambda system.

The only gray wire (or dirty white wire, kind of hard to say) in that branch of the harness is connected to the passenger side turn/park lamp, which is correct according to the wiring diagram. Based on the diagram it seems like the block temp switch and the blue firewall pressure switch are both connected to the same pin of the lambda ECU, but I haven't been able to find the wire that would connect to the pressure switch either, so I'm wondering whether it takes a different path through the harness or whether it's missing entirely.

I wish I could find one of these cars in a junkyard so that I could at least look at how the harness is supposed to be before proceeding.

I was going to throw out the hood insulation blanket since it had a burnt spot on it and I found another reason to get rid of it when I pulled it down. There’s no mouse smell in the interior so I think this is as far as they got but boy did they get busy.

Progress has stalled out a little on this but I'm hoping to get back to it soon - I'm still accumulating parts though. I found an NOS fuel distributor on eBay for less than the cost of a rebuilt one so I snagged it - the box was gross but the FD itself was still wrapped in plastic. Pretty neat to see one fresh out of the package. I salvaged the fittings from the firewall fuel lines in preparation for building new ones. hiperfauto cleared up the last question I had about the firewall wiring for the pressure switch so I can start working on repairing that - I appreciate them looking at their car and confirming the wire routing. Finally I have a replacement speedo cable on the way, everyone Stateside who said they could get a Gemo speedo cable ended up canceling my orders. I found one in the UK for about the same $ so hopefully it won't take too long to arrive.

Despite the pandemic I've been busier than ever with my job so my garage time has been scarce. I did get a chance to swap the speedo cable, the existing (and probably original) one got burnt and the plastic nut at the speedo end was broken off so I went ahead and swapped it out.

My first attempt at making new fuel lines didn't go well. I wanted to be sure they wouldn't leak so I got some Oetiker clamps to put over the fittings. The ID of the clamps was too small, but I'm dumb and I tried to force them over the fittings. It ended up nicking the tubing. Blerg. Gonna try again soon.

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New (1234490 is the right PN for this application):





The business end: