Well I finally heard from the shop yesterday afternoon and my red 85 will be on the road again!! In case anyone forgot i was suffering from sluggish driving and crappy idle. I dropped the car off at a highly recommended independent shop. Well, 1 month and 400 dollars later they found the problem. Apparently, four of my injectors were bad (the only reason I found this out was because I stopped down there to see how the work was going ). They were quoting me 100 bucks a piece for the injectors !!! Well, luckily my 86 was at home with a bad bottom end but good injectors. I went home, removed the rail and dropped it off at the shop. They called last night to let me know that the emissions are good, the performance is awesome, and its ready to go. Now I just need my refund from the good ol' government to pay for it

 

Wow, one month; bummer. Glad to hear it's fixed. Did you request the bad injectors back? Maybe you can send them out to Rich at Cruizinperformance.com to have them tested/cleaned/flow checked. Maybe you just had a leaking seal.

 

Sounds like a good idea. that way I'll have a spare set incase the 86's new motor needs them. They were really pulling their hair out on this one. Soon after the dropoff, it became apparent that it was going to take longer than a couple of days. I was kind of strssing because the only car I had to drive was my GTO and well with gas prices being what they are and the fact that it only runs on hi-test, I was spending 20 every other day to keep it on the road (GTO=Gas Tires Oil). Once I got my 83 Camaro tagged and my wife got a 93 LeSabre (we bought it off my parents), the urgency to get it back disappeared. When I would check up, it was either waiting for a part, or they were doing further testing. They assured me that they wanted to find the actual problem rather than arbitraily throw parts at it. Overall, I'm glad with the results-- They worked on it for 40 hrs but are only charging me for 6 and they saved me alot of cursing and pulling my own hair out!!

 

Well that's cool, then... at least they're not overcharging. That's one thing I'd like to buy, one of the fuel injector testers. It looks like you can "make one at home"! It's used in conjunction with a fuel pressure gauge, and, is basically, a switch and a timer. An injector is supposed to spray a certain amount of fuel in a certain time (called the "injector balance test").

You put the pressure gauge on the fuel rail, and hook the tester up to one of the injectors, and to the battery. Then, for each injector to test, you prime the fuel rail, and hit the switch for a certain amount of seconds. The pressure should drop by a certain PSI, and that pressure drop should be equal between all of the injectors.

 

That was the test they performed that told them what the problem was. I read it in the Helm manual but given my state of mind at the time (no legally running vehicles, driving my classic everywhere, driving EVERYWHERE because the wife can't drive stick), I was too stressed to absorb what the manual was saying and kind of blew it off. oh well, by the time I would have bought the equipment, etc I probably would have spent close to what I paid these guys