So it's been a few weeks since my last post, but I have been working on the car a fair bit. Two weekends ago I discovered that my oil seal on my distributor was leaking. When I blew into the crankcase emissions hose to check for vacuum leaks this was the result:

Since I didn't have the parts to rebuilt the distributor, that had to wait till next weekend. In the meantime I thought I would swap out the timing belt, timing belt bearing, v-belt and water pump since I had new ones sitting around. A couple of issues came up, first the aux shaft that drives the oil pump had been aligned incorrectly relative to the crankshaft... which was a little scary since apparently they won't clear each other at all alignments and a collision often results in damage to the block. Since the engine seems to be operating, and a problem usually results in catastrophic damage (from what I've read) hopefully I'm in the clear.

                                         (Old belt about to come off)

My other problem occurred late Sunday night as I was rushing to get everything assembled so I could park the car in my garage for the week and forget about it. As I was refilling the car with coolant I noticed that most of the coolant was ending up on the street! I couldn't figure out exactly were it was leaking from then, it was late and I was tired so I drove it into the garage without coolant. Last Saturday I got it patched up. It was leaking from the gasket between the metal hose to the heater core and the water pump. I had to use two gaskets to get it to stop leaking. I think the surface of the heater hose is no longer flat... but it seems well sealed now.

Last week I also pulled my fuel injectors and tried to clean them in my lab...

which proved a little more difficult than I realized... but I was able to run a few cups of alcohol through them backwards and forwards as well as let them sit in the ultrasonic cleaner for a half hour or so. I wasn't getting a very good spray pattern from them, but I was only running 15psi alcohol through them and the car operates at 35-40psi so maybe my pressure was just too low to get good atomization. I also have concerns about the injectors themselves, injectors 2 and 3 appear to be replacements... hopefully their flow rate is similar to 1 and 4? I think it might be worth having them sent out to be professionally cleaned and flow matched at some point. On top of that the cold start injector seems to fire inconsistently (probably do to my over zealousness with the vice-grips during its removal), this also makes me a little concerned that it may be leaking? In any case I can still start the car while cold... although it does seem a little more stubborn than before.

After reinstalling the injectors the car was running very poorly and roughly... my initial suspicion was that it was running on 3 cylinders (it was), but when I first pulled plug wires to see which ones made a difference somehow I missed that cylinder 3 was not firing (this was very clear to me the second time I pulled plug wires.) I took a break at this point to rebuild the distributor, replacing all of the seals, o-rings, and bearings as well as the cap and rotor. After re-install the car was still running rough obviously as cylinder 3 wasn't firing, but the idle speed did seem more constant than before. I had no idea at the time why the car was so rough... so I took it for a 30 mile ride to see if the problem would work itself out... It didn't. Shortly after returning I recheck the cylinders and discovered it was #3 that was not firing... well the injector was not firing but the plug was. So I checked and low and behold the connector on the Fuel Injection harness was badly messed up for #3... so I temporarily fixed it with some alligator clips and the car seems to be running pretty good.

I also discovered around this point (a rattle was developing) that they exhaust had rusted and broken off right behind the resonator (center muffler). So I'll need to fix that before I take it back in for inspection/smog. In any case the car seems to be running better and stronger than it ever has although I still have some concerns regarding mixture and the cold start injector. Also, it does seem to still miss at idle once every 2-3 seconds or so (better than before but still annoying).