June 2001 - Working on Reliability

New gremlins: Painful, time consuming and expensive.

My 27 year old fuel pump had given up the ghost. I purchased a like-new condition used one from 2002 Haus to resolve the problem (thanks Rob!). The problem was fuel starvation. The longer the pump ran, the worse it got from use -- it slowly quits pumping fuel with any pressure to the Kugelfisher pump, which made RPMs slowly start to drop off to the point where it was just a dead car. You had to let it cool off to let the problem go away temporarily. So much for a long trip!!  By the looks of this old rusty pump, it was a miracle it lasted this long!

My radiator was not working well either... For more information, see my How-To page on "Replacing Your Radiator".