No Start/New Member 90 Legacy Wagon

[Tylerman]

Picked up a 1st gen Legacy wagon that had been off the road since 2016. Bid on an auction expecting someone to come along and outbid me and well the rest is a non-running wagon in my side yard. Rust free, the clearcoat is burned through in a few places but that’s Florida weather for you. Found some wiring damage under the hood at the connectors for the knock, cam position and crank position sensors. Sure enough fixing that got me some spark on all 4 plugs and it would sputter with starter fluid. But I wasn’t getting any fuel up front so I checked and the fuel pump was plugged up with rust so I replaced that plus the filter and blew air and degreaser through the lines and now I can get it to sputter but not idle. Pulled the injectors and they were gummed all too. So now I am waiting on rockauto to deliver my new injectors and THEN I move on to the next problem, probably tires and brakes. Oh and the wiring damage includes missing headlight sockets and connectors. That looks like someone cut them cause the ends of the wires are clean whereas the sensor wires were chewed up. Anyway. Hi!

[arse_sidewards]

Welcome to the board. Sounds like you know what you're doing.

[Tylerman]

Welcome to the board. Sounds like you know what you're doing.

Thanks, I can at least make it sound that way to my wife which is enough for me.

[Tylerman]

Need to change the title cause this baby started and ran today! Replaced 3 fuel injectors, 2 with brand new and 1 rebuilt but the 4th one got returned as non-rebuildable so I put it back in and hit Send. Once it burned out the ATF I had fogged the cylinders with it picked up a decent idle and would mostly respond well to throttle input, but it would choke and die in D when climbing hills. Yeah yeah I’ve already ordered two more new fuel injectors and I’ll keep the rebuild one as a backup.

Regardless, this car hasn’t run since 2016 AFAIK so it felt good to swing it around and get it parked in my driveway instead of the empty lot next to my house.

[Tylerman]

Decided since the starter was weak to pull and test it and it’s dead, so I got a rebuild kit on the bench to install this week. Went ahead and changed the engine oil and filter since I know the engine is a runner. Also got some 80w90 for the differential and trying to find some Dex III/IV to flush the transmission before too long.

One other thing that came up when we were able to drive it last weekend was it overheated and puked coolant out of the overflow, but checking the level today the radiator is full and the coolant is clean and green so I’m thinking the fans aren’t kicking on.

[Tylerman]

Rebuilt my starter and had it bench tested and it was good, however once I reinstalled it I still wasn’t getting any action. I pulled the signal wire from the transmission interlock and was showing 155-170 ohms resistance when I would turn the key to the start position. I put a jumper from the terminal on the starter to the battery and it fired right up so now I just have to sort out the red/yellow wire. The old female connector looked pretty bad so I cut it off and crimped on a new one with no improvement, so it’s into the transmission tunnel to try and sort this out.
Hopefully soon my other two injectors show up. I did try driving it again but it struggles in gear under any kind of load. I’ve had transmission slip and grind before and this does t feel like that, so I’m hoping cleaning up the fuel delivery once and for all will fix it.
And after allowing the car to idle for 20+ minutes and watching the temp slowly climb past the midway point on the gauge, the fans never kicked on. I shut the engine off at that point and added it to the “one more problem to sort out” pile

[Tylerman]

Simple check of the fuse box in the drivers footwell and sure enough the 20a for the cooling fan circuit was burned, replaced that and now the fans kick on.
Also gave the gas tank a taste of mechanic-in-a-bottle and it started idling better and was able to drive back and forth on my street, up and down some hills. Who knew that snake oil stuff actually does help?