the Walnut Diary

NOTE: The passenger side is right, the driver’s side is left for the purposes of this article.

8:00 a.m. Restless and anxious to get at the project, but must wait for son to arrive. Make work. Build fire in auto shop. Brush the dog. Clean car mats.

Enough of this. I want to wrench. I decide to pull a spark plug to see their condition. The easiest access is the second cylinder from the front on the left. The coil has a 3″ split in the plastic tube, so I pick a new one out of the box and install it, but of course I can’t test it yet.

12:00 p.m. Charlie, Roz and Ada arrive.

1:00 p.m. We start in on Ruby. Charlie scopes and photographs, and we eventually agree there’s little point of further disassembly.

Charlie spends an hour trying to get the rear right screw into the fuel rail.

2:10 p.m. We partially remove the manifold to allow the installation of that damned screw. Now I understand why techs leave the fuel rails on the manifold, and remove the whole unit. The right rear screw is otherwise impossible.

Things go back together well. Charlie understands the strange packages with air running through them on the top of the engine. I content myself with putting on covers and clipping on injectors. Back go the fuel pump fuses, and Ruby fires up. There’s a slight miss which we decide to deal with after Easter Dinner.

4:45 p.m. The OBD reader shows P0202. That means the injector on cylinder 2 is misfiring. That’s the second one from the front. I quickly tear in to the coil I had replaced this morning, second from the front. No amount of abuse of the coil and the injector on what turns out to be cylinder #6 helps the problem.

Eventually I call up a diagram, realize I have been working on the wrong side of the car, take off the right air pump, loosen the air pump holder, remove the motor mount shaft and the notoriously fragile beauty cover which fingers in among these obstructions, only to discover an injector wiring connector which is loose under the fuel rail and an awkward clump of wiring. Ten minutes later it clicks into place. Ruby fires up smooth and powerful. I put the car back together, vowing to post a diagram of Ruby’s engine on the shop wall so I will always know where cylinder #2 is.

6:00 p.m. All better. Test drive is a quick, one mile sprint, and home.