Ladies and Gentlemen,

1990 740 turbo wagon, automatic, 197,238 mi. original transmission and turbo. Mitsubishi turbo. Hot oil changes every 3,000 to 4,000 mi. Occasional delays to 5,000 mi. intervals. Inexpensive and readily available - Fleet Farm - Fram oil filters. I have been the second owner of the car for the last 120,000 mi. The PO was my old college roommate and his wife. This car was the nanny's car.

I post under Jenny II, the car's name. My last post was just over a year ago. Here is a post back on spraying solvent into the dashboard ignition about a year ago: since then, the ignition has not stuck in the Start position even once. I used that Blaster material for this. I also sprayed Blaster down the sheath of the kickdown cable, which was sticking badly at the time, apparently because of the way I was cleaning the engine at visits to the local car wash, about five years ago. That fixed the sticking kickdown cable. That problem had been preventing upshifts after passing maneuvers with increasing frequency. I also flushed or drained and replaced the transmission fluid soon and repeatedly after that.

The brake calipers stopped squeaking much after last summer and I didn't do anything to them aside from taking them apart part way and putting them back together again.

Oil consumption went way down on the car, about 80 percent down, after I and a neighborhood shade-tree mechanic swapped out all the rubber and fabric seals for the motor and also the turbocharger plumbing just over a year ago. There are also no discernible standing oil leaks from the car anymore since then. I put in a new driveway here in the summer of 2006 and have been parking that car on the new driveway surface since then. There are no spots on the driveway. I will be going back to synthetic oil as soon as I use up my remaining stores of Dino oil. I had been stockpiling that stuff, my car used to need a quart of oil with every tank of gas before plugging the leaks. One time, driving out west on open roads, I needed a quart and a half of oil after 250 mi. of driving.

Here is the current issue:

Hard starting about three-quarters of the time. This has been intermittently ongoing now for a couple of months. This is a big change for the car. It always used to start almost immediately, every time.

I am getting both clicks, one for each of the the two pumps, out of the fuel pump relay when starting the car. I can feel that with my hand on the relay when turning the ignition key. Further, having the tank full of gas does not seem to make any difference.. The car is still starting hard about three-quarters of the time even with the tank chock full of gas.

I have opened up the panel access to the gas tank but do not look forward to removing the pre-pump. Besides, if having the tank full of gas does not make the car easy to start, then doesn't this indicate that the pre-pomp is not the cause of the hard starting?

Should I be looking at the fuel pressure regulator instead? Would one or more of you please comment on this?

I am going to try to get more definitive feedback on whether the pre-pump in the tank is really working yet this afternoon. I will post again right away after that. Thank you all.

Paul Scesniak
in Wisconsin