Despite the nighmarish rust and surprisingly "wet" floor under the diver's seat (the car has been under a shelter for 2 weeks now...), I still need to get the mechanicals of the car up to spec, if I'm even considering driving it.

The car started and idled well when I got it. Although I never had it going for more than 10 minutes or so. After fixing my fuel lines, I drove it around a neighboring lot a bit before I parked it to investigate the undercarriage rust. When going, the engine sounds very smooth and strong. It revs very well and calms down nicely. It has a nice throaty engine sound.

Now I'm having a hard time getting the car to start. When I do finally get it running, it idles very smooth and strong and then dies very abruptly. Getting it started again is very difficult and is rarely successful for more than a stumbling start and no idle. Usually coming back to it the next day allows it to fire up, but the whole cycle repeats.

Considering the rusted-out fuel line problem that I began with, I was concerned that there was some blockage or that the fuel pump had been damaged. However, I hear the fuel pump running, there's good pressure in the line, and if I pull any fuel hoses, I get a good volume of fuel coming out. I've also removed and cleaned the sparks and replaced the spark wires. There's plenty of fuel getting into the cylinders.

Given that fuel is not the issue, I'm suspecting that there's some sort of ignition problem, or something is flooding out the car.

If the problem is the later, are there any particular D-Jet components that would cause these symptoms? If it's ignition, could the points be causing problems like this? My experience with bad points were rough running and ocassionaly a backfire, the 73ES doesn't seem to have that sort of problem. I'm not sure what other sort of problem would let the car run so well sometimes, but not even start other times.




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1967 P220 (My every-other-daily driver...), 1972 145S (1993-1997), 1973 1800ES (2006-Present), 1977 245 DL (1993-1999), 1983 245 (1998-2001), 1986 745 GLE (1997-2005), 1990 745 GL (2003-4), 1995 945 (2005-Present)....
What's a "Sedan"???