My car has been out of commission since last friday, chilling at the local shell gas station. Me and my father bought a tow strap and brought the car back home last night(or this morning) at 2:30am to avoid traffic.

Anyway I woke up at 10:30 and went to work on my 7. took the IC off and cleaned it since I was pretty sure it was gonna be down for a few more days. the problem was- It woudnt start, and if it did, it would run for like half a minute and die. anyway I checked the fuel pressure with the squeeze the fuel line with your fingers way--- no good I had no pressure at all in the fuel lines.

I popped the trunk and took the fuel pump out, removed the pump from its skeleton wired it up to the battery and it worked, really good... I was suprized since it didnt work in the car and I had already checked the fuse and the main relay. So I put the pump back in its skeleton and set in in the trunk and tested all the wires again. everything checked out fine, since i'm not really a big car fixer I went really slow and double checked everything over a second time... everything was A O K... getting pissed I finally traced all the wires to the engine bay and I spotted that the power and ground wire had been spliced off from the main relay to some little dinky 12v pos $2 relay made for fog lights... I have no idea why the previous owner or his mechinic did this but it was a stupid course of action in every way

Went to Advance Auto Parts and got another one with the thought in mind that it would only last for a couple thousand miles but I need this car on the road (Unfortunately my 11mpg TII vert is my daily driver)... put the new relay on and Primed the fuel system-- gave it a crank and the mighty 7 coughed out some white smoke as it roared back to life(haha 1.3L roaring). Anyway a $2, 2 minute fix ended up being like a 5 hour job because I bought the car like it is set up with microtech , expecting it to be a go by the haynes manual fix.... sigh, well my weekend was shot and I decided to post my horrible experience for all to see.

 

hey sam.

for the record.... the stock fuel pump wireing is about 50x more complicated, and 100x more crappy and all aftermarket ECU cars use a relay for the fuel pump. btw... i love relays, they are more valueable than you think. glad to hear you got the car fixed pretty cheapley tho.

D

 

The relay is needed by the Microtech to switch the fuel pump. Normally, the pump is wired directly to the battery through this relay. The Microteh then switches that relay. No idea why yours was routed through the stock relay as that just doesn't make sense.

For the record, all relays found in auto parts stores are low quality. Even the Bosch relays leave a lot to be desired. If you want high quality relays, you need to go to a "real" electronics store.

 

Truly confusing to me. The main relay might kill the output to the coils but not the fuel pump. About the only thing the main relay does for the fuel pump, is determine whether the fuel pump gets approx 9volts or a full 12volts, thru the Fuel PUmp Relay and Resistor assy. Sounds like a truly honked up car as far as that particular item goes.

 

Thats hillarious. Where did I hear this from? Oh yeah - you, just yesterday. Listen to the man!

 

And I thought I had it bad doing 18 mpg around town.

 

I understand the need for a relay but I thought it was strange it originally had such a low quality cheap relay

18 mpg --that would be nice!