Think this could be an issue? Connector was packed with it all over the terminals.







My car has had a weird electrical issue for the last couple of months, the only change in the car was this fuel pump between when it ran great last and when the issue showed itself. I was swapping back in a stock pump and found this.

 

That much at the connector could mean your fuel filter is clogged.

 

car runs exactly the same with yours. (ie, still shitty)

 

School me on the problem, I've lost track.

 

Basically my alternator failed and allowed huge voltage spikes. I saw 21v once on my MS.

I had replaced the pump about a week before cause i was going lean when driving, so i was thinking the pump was failing...the leanness was caused by the voltage increase and the lack of voltage compensation in my megasquirt so it was leaning out.

I replaced the alternator and everything was okay for a week or two. First thing I did notice wrong was my EBC solenoid failed.

Then one day leaving work, the car wouldn't idle well, it was oscillating horribly and the only cure was to drive up the fuel and run it around 13.0:1 AFR.

ever since then i've lost MPG (from 27 to about 19mpg) and had to completely retune my enrichments and fuel table.

I've had other little oddities, my LC1 resets during driving every now and again, and the a/c switch was causing crazy weirdness to my MS.

I've done a lot of swapping of parts and cursing to try to solve it. Figured I'd swap out the pump and thought maybe it could have been a root cause.

 

Have you run through and checked ALL of your grounds?

Especially the main straps in the trunk to frame; main negative to PPF at rear of PPF, strap under brake booster to motor?

It sounds like current is being drawn through all the wrong places.

 

I've checked everything but the PPF strap which I need to - I agree with your hypothesis though.

Currently the A/C wont run in positions #3 or #4 due to the amount of voltage on the output ground wire. There's about ~1.80v on the line that goes into my MS when in those positions...it's just a little too high to allow the MS to trigger that input. On speed #2 it drops to about 1.5v and the input triggers like it should. The input floats high and needs to see less than ~1.7v or so to trigger. Never was a problem before.

Before I changed my input within the MS (to the ms3x card), those fan speeds were actually causing the MS raise the idle speed. The a/c would work, but it was causing the idle valve to completely open, something was confusing the ms.

 

I found that the ground strap at the battery was the worst culprit in a member's car in NY. It had been disconnected causing havoc because the motor ground was deteriorated. All ground flow had to seek the course of least resistance.

You need to remember that the engine and drive train are isolated by motor mounts and differential mounts from the rest of the electrical system to realize how important the ground connections are.

 

The ground strap at the battery looks good and clean. I'm acutally going to have my battery tested this afternoon; it's one of the last things I've tried replacing. I do need to check the PPF ground strap, but everything in the bay looks okay. The fuel rail ground is solid, the ground strap on the dirver side under the heater hose could stand replacing; the wire is old and looks worn. The block under the booster is tight and clean.

So far I've tried: new coils, plugs, injectors, tested the alternator, performed leakdown/compression, built a new MS board, tried a different ms3 cpu, reaplced the blower motor & hvac unit & resistor pack, and a few other things I can't remember. At first I couldn't determine if it was mechanical or what, but everything points to an electrical issue, but I can't seem to find the culprit.

The a/c issue happened much later after the intial rich/lumpy idle business...it started with the MS blipping the throttle open randomly every now and again, then got progressively worse where if I turned on the MS the idle immediately shot up. It had something to do with the voltage on the input.

If I unplug the blower motor, that issue went away, and the a/c worked like intended...problem is, no blower to blow all that cold air on my pretty little face. I moved that input to the ms3x card whihc has a better flyback circuit, the idle doesn't go crazy but the input doesn't trigger on fan speeds #3 and #4 due ot the voltage on that input like I stated before.