If she weren't down with injuries this post would upbeat

[forzaphil]

Unfortunately, this post will be melancholy and a little depressing. I still have quite a bit of troubleshooting to do with my 1980 Spider 2000 Fuel injected, (dubbed "Valentina") so i will wait to post my questions and queries until then. Oregon State's Mechanical Engineering program has me pretty tied down as far as time to work on her, but i will definitely be posting some pleas for pointers in a little while. I feel good knowing i at least have a support group though .

Phil,
Corvallis OR

[SLOSpider]

Check fuel pressure, filter, and clean all grounds. Theres a start for you...

[Exit98]

Hang in there Slo, once you get Valentina's FI sorted out you'll be a happy camper. You'll get there.

[mdrburchette]

Welcome Phil, Post pics when you can and remember, if all else fails, slap a carb on it.

[rlux4]

Hi Phil, welcome to the fourm. How long have you had your Spider? In other words, how long has she been waiting to get back on the road?
We do enjoy pictures of member's cars.
Ron

[SLOSpider]

I have owned my spider for 1 month and driven 10 miles at best......Dont worry it takes time to get things right sometimes. We know how you feel...

[Samy]

I just went through a challenging time with my 1981 Fiat Spiders FI. For starters, I saved the car from the junkyard. It sat for seven years (and one year in my garage). The good news is I just got it running good enough to drive it around the block. My car had junk in the tank, junk in the fuel pump and fuel filter. The relay was bad (as well as the wiring burned up in a few spots). I fixed the relay and wiring and drained the tank. In addition to reading the diagnostic material, go to Autozone and borrow a fuel pressure tester. Hook it up under the hood and make sure the PSI is ~30 - 50. The one the PO (previous owner) put on my car was only putting out 30 then dropped to 15-20. Way wrong. I bought a new pump and added filters before and after the pump and whola it runs great!! I now need to seal the tank and move on to many other punch list items for the car.....

[forzaphil]

Bad news is the car has sat for about 3 months straight now, but the good news is i have made enough money to start working on it again! wahoo! Thanks for the tip on the fuel pressure. I will run to auto zone to borrow a pressure tester. I also had a question for you all. Is it possible that the universal fuel filter that they set me up with at AutoZone and said was for my model of Fiat is too small or doesn't pass enough fuel through it? the one i took off when i changed it was a lot bigger than the one they gave me, but the inlet and outlet tubes on both are the same size. I'm wondering if i made a mistake by not buying it off of IAP. Thanks all for your help. I'm to be married in a week, so if pictures aren't up before then or soon after, forgive me, More important things on my plate !

Thanks again for all your help

[mdrburchette]

Congrats on your pending wedding! Hope Valentina isn't a jealous gal. Don and Juan, my 71 and 72 Spiders, are known to break down together just to show me who's boss.

[baltobernie]

Thanks all for your help. I'm to be married in a week,

Go enjoy your wedding! With a little luck, it's the only one you'll have - the car can wait until later. But take a photo of the three of you, for posterity )

[forzaphil]

Alright i'm back. Great news! the replacement fuel pump i got through bosch i don't think is the issue, nor the filter that was smaller than the original (must be a universal fuel filter). Fuel pressure tester read 40 psi with ignition on run, but the car wasn't started.

Now to the interesting part. While checking all of the wiring harnesses to the injectors with a noid light, all had juice running to them and the noid light flashed on all four. i noticed however on three of the four that having them unplugged made it run really poorly (barely keeping itself going) as i was checking the current through it, but one of them was different. with the very front harness unplugged from it's injector it ran real rough, but as soon as the noid light was plugged in it actually evened out and sounded driveable. Any tips? is there a specific way to clean all of the injectors to make sure they're not gummed up or stuck open? I'm going to take them out tomorrow and test them all. is it easiest to take off the plenum? Thanks to all in advance.

Phil

Sia la forza con voi

[kmead]

Yes there is a service that will clean them, balance the flow of all of them (so they are nearly the same) and so on. It is apparently well worth the money to have it done.

If you do a brief search you will find a few sources. You may even find one locally.

[mPedro08]

Yes there is a service that will clean them, balance the flow of all of them (so they are nearly the same) and so on. It is apparently well worth the money to have it done.

If you do a brief search you will find a few sources. You may even find one locally.

Second the "well worth it" comment. I do not have FI on my Spider but do on a supercharged Miata. Cleaning the injectors prior to installing the supercharger likely saved the motor. They were bad, and the car really did not run that badly overall. Made an enormous difference and was like $25 per injector I believe.

I used a company called Dr. Injector, they franchise so i found I guy that was doing it out of his garage locally. He had all the equipment set up, was fast and efficient and they are still in place dumping fuel today.

[forzaphil]

Well i'll be damned. So, apparently i have been somewhat dumb and didn't realize it (i'm new at this whole mechanic thing)

So when the problems all started, i realized the white wire running from the distributor to the coil had touched the exhaust and melted (hence no spark at the very beginning) I spliced them back together and got spark, but it hasn't been the same ever since. It runs really rough and idles really roughly. If i get it up to 3000 rpm it levels out and sounds actually quite nice (the PO put a glasspack muffler on it. mmmm... but until 3000 RPM, it's undriveable. Could the wires melting together have screwed something over like the double relay perhaps? or the magnetic pickup it's attached too? Is there anything else it could have affected? I know i should probably replace the wire, but as is stated above, I'm a little poor (i know i know, wrong car to have for a broke college kid) and don't have the budget for fixing every single little thing wrong with her.

come thanksgiving, i will finally be able to run the trouble shooting with the voltmeter and test light that Ron posted in other threads (thanks so much by the way. this site is pretty amazing) to make sure my FI sensors are okay.

Thanks to all in advance!

[mdrburchette]

It's possible that white insulated wire has a break in it somewhere else too. This is a common problem. when you get a little extra money, go ahead and get you a new coil wire. They are available through our normal vendors or even AutoZone. When you get the new one, make sure you set the gap properly. I think around .024? Someone can correct me if I'm wrong.