I’ve spent a LOT of time working on 1082/2000 in the last week. Much of that time was spent just trying to get fuel to the rail. The gas was bad, the wally got jammed up, and the fuel pump rewire was a dead relay and blown fuse connected with 12AWG. Meanwhile, the weather has gone from 80* up to over 90* on Wednesday, and back down to mid-70* yesterday. It’s been a wonderful, yet challenging week to be outside, hunched over a black Mitsubishi in the sun. It hasn’t all been hunching over, though.

Some of my time working on 1082 was spent lying lazily in cool grass in the shadow of a hulking dead Mitsubishi. Now, the shade made things cooler, for sure, but the yard had also recently been irrigated, so I think the mud I was lying in made things that much cooler still. Fortunately, the E39A Galants have a drain bolt on the gas tank which makes draining that gas a piece of cake, so my time in the cool, shady filth was pleasant.

As fuel sits, it does start to break down and get funky, so if you’re one of the considerately not mentioned GVR4 owners with a Galant up on jack stands for any length of time, you might consider draining the fuel and using it in your daily driver. (Just be sure you use a spotlessly clean catch can for fuel you want to use again.)

So, once I got the fuel pump assembly rebuilt correctly – with the good wally on the right pump assembly, which had been all cleaned up in the media blaster and solvent – I knew I couldn’t get every last drop of the questionable fuel out of the tank without dropping the tank, so I left the drain bolt out and poured the old gas back into the tank through the pump location a few times. The idea being to flush out any larger particulates that might have settled to the bottom of the tank. After this was done, I locked the drain bolt into place, installed the good fuel pump, and poured in about 5 gallons of fresh fuel I just bought.

Now there was fuel at the rail! No question about pressure either, as the disconnected feed line for the rail shot a stream of fuel all the way over to the driver’s side fender the instant I turned the key. Confident that I had finally resolved this matter, I buttoned up the fuel rail connections, picked up my tools, and got my Galant loaded up to head home, prior to test firing the engine. Murphy was not pleased.

Car still wouldn’t fire. Fuel at the rail. Spark. Compression. What the hell? I positively KNEW there was fuel pressure in that rail. I pulled the return line and witnessed fuel splashing off the firewall! I KNEW there was spark, because I pulled the number 4 plug, stuck it in the wire, and parked it on a strut tower brace while cranking it over and not only heard the spark, but SAW it too. I even cut out this monstrosity of a “security system” that was hacked into the harness.

Prior to pulling that spark plug, I cranked for a solid 15 seconds. When I pulled that plug, it was bone dry. Dun dun duuuunnnn. In fact, they were ALL dry. Sooty, gunked up Bosch platinum something or others. (If the spark plugs don’t say NGK, I don’t trust em.) I decided the injectors might be stuck from the shellac drying in them or something. I pulled the rail and headed to the shop in search of injectors and spark plugs.

I took the fuel rail, RC 550cc injectors, and janky Bosch platinum plugs with me to the shop, where I quickly found a box of brand new plugs. It took me some time to figure out an injector solution, but I figured the engine for “The Flying Galant” (the GVR4 that’s been six feet up on a lift for about eight months, now, at the shop) was fitted with injectors and was only collecting dust at this point, so I snagged them and headed back to the house.

Got to the house, installed the rail and injectors, installed the spark plugs, sat down, crossed my fingers, engaged the starter. There was absolutely no change whatsoever.

At this point in the story, I’d like to mention to the veteran Mitsubishi guys that one of the very first things I did, in the first fifteen minutes I was on-site with this car, was swap the ECU, which had already had the caps replaced and an EPROM burned for the 16G/550 combo, with another “known good” ECU. It had been remanufactured and was even labeled “GVR4, stock image.” Neither ECU produced differing results. So I did consider ECU right off the back. Please stop yelling at your computer.

Finally, I called up Ray, who had already gone over this car once before, and shared with him what I’d done. When he suggested the ECU and I told him I’d swapped for a “known good” unit, he reminded me of the only sure-fire way to establish “known good ECU.” You’ve got to see it working in a running car for yourself before you take anyone’s word about it. This is not doubting others, but these ECUs have a reputation and it’s not of being dreamy. So how do you confirm that a questionable ECU is good or not?

Some might suggest taking the ECU out of the GVR4 that I drove over the to the house and plugging it into the black car that won’t start. I’ll admit, it was a thought that crossed my mind, but when you’ve seen the sort of electrical shenanigans that I have on that car, and there is a possibility that a perfectly good ECU (in this case, reworked by Ray himself, specifically for this car) was now dead, you start thinking about your GVR4 joining the dead one in your friend’s yard and that’s not a good feeling. Instead, what you do is you take the questionable ECU out of the dead car and you plug it into YOUR car. After all, if your car runs just fine and then doesn’t run on the other ECU, well, you get the idea.

I was surprised to see the ECU in my Galant had written on it “91 Talon auto[matic] – NO EPROM,” as that means I’ve been enjoying driving my own Galant for several months under less than ideal management, but shelving that project for another day, I connected the 1082’s ECU to 464’s harness and turned the key.

NOTHING.

Excited, I grabbed the remanufactured ECU and plugged IT in.

NOTHING.

I took them both to the shop, where Keith immediately opened the first ECU up because he was THAT surprised that it was janky. A quick once over showed no signs of trouble, but he asked Belinda back in the shop to check it out under the microscope. She came back inside of five minutes and showed us where one of the infamous electrolytic capacitors had shat the board. It was just barely noticeable without a microscope, but this was embarrassing.

ECU caps are DSM 101. I should have cracked the case in the field and inspected it right away. Of course, the fuel pump was still seized and the rewire job was all jacked up as well, so it wouldn’t have been a quick fix regardless, but it was still a bittersweet cocktail of shame and enlightenment that brought my day to a close yesterday.

Here in a few minutes, I’ll be heading back over to the shop to finish borrowing the ECU out of the “Flying Galant.” I’m going to plug it into 464 to confirm that it works. Then I’m going to head back over to the house and put this project to bed once and for all. It’s Friday, you know. Even unemployed blokes enjoy their weekends!

Oh yeah! I almost forgot. What about that other ECU? The remanufactured unit that was also “known good?” Well, I’ll let the picture speak for itself. (If you don’t get it, hover over the image.)