It's more than ethanol. Modern, environmentally friendly fuels are not friendly to long term productivity of the fuel system. You should look into TC-W3;

https://maxima.org/forums/fluids-lub...itive-new.html

 

James,

RE: your turbo Keeping your gas tank full will help prevent water problems and help the gasoline / ethanol mix last longer. This also helps to prevent the older tanks from rusting.

I'm not sure how current this list is, but I found a few ethanol-free gas stations here in Georgia on this website: http://pure-gas.org/?stateprov=GA

 

Try this if you cars ever are sitting up for extended periods:

Attwood 8oz StarTron Gas Additive

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Attwood-8o...ingMethod=p13n

 

So just to update this -

Labor Day weekend my car suddenly wouldn't start. Dug the fuel pump out and tested it putting 12 volts to it and it was dead as dead can be. Figured the river water gas in the tank ruined it. Thankfully I still had my OEM fuel pump that I removed from my blue VE when I swapped my Walbro in for the turbo build. I pulled that pump out of storage, swapped it in, go to start the car and it STILL wouldn't start. Ugh. So I pull it all back out, test that pump and that pump is dead too! Keep in mind the pump was perfectly operational last summer when removed from my blue VE.

I did some research on that and apparently that's somewhat common when storing used fuel pumps due to the residual gas (ethanol!) that sticks around inside the pump during storage. So I had to toss that out, which sucks, since I was counting on that being a good spare backup.

Double thankfully I did already have a new fuel pump I bought on Rock Auto close-out. So I swapped that one in, STILL WOULDN'T START. Pull the whole thing back out and decide to test the actual fuel pump hanger assembly. The fuel pump hanger assembly is bad! I've only seen that happen a handful of times in my 3rd gen "lifetime" and that was almost always on northern super rusty cars with corroded hanger wiring. This hanger looked brand new. What are the odds two bad fuel pumps and one bad hanger assembly!?

Triple thankfully I had a spare hanger assembly too. So I swapped that one in plus my new fuel pump so I could drive it to work the week of Labor Day since I ran out of time trying to diagnose the car and didn't have time to do the gas tank.

Fast forward to this past weekend, I installed the new tank, put a new sock on my new fuel pump (which had only 60 miles on it by that time but the fuel pump sock was already a muddy mess), installed all new rubber hoses/etc on the fuel tank, and installed new fuel filter as well. Had two 2 gallon gas tanks so I filled those up and put the the gas into my new tank. Then drove the car straight to the gas station not even 5 miles away and BARELY MADE IT, I coasted into the station basically running out of gas. I was praying for that stop light right before the gas station to turn green because I was seconds away from stalling at the intersection. My gas light wasn't even on and the car had at least 3.5 gallons in it. Who knew that 3.5 gallons of gas in a 3rd gen would basically equate to running out of gas? Luckily I made it. The car then took 15 gallons of gas, 93 octane of course.

So - now that that is all done - the car still isn't totally cured I've noticed these past few days. The car will either start-up instantly OR it'll start up and immediately die. It will do the immediate dying thing about 1/3 of the time. It always starts right up after that but it is still annoying.

Beyond that, I still get intermittent slight bucking when driving the car, almost always during moderate acceleration - it feels as if the engine cuts out for a split second, and it only starts to do it after about 10-15 minutes of drive time, once the car is nice and hot.

I'm about ready to push this car off a cliff.

 

That's crazy James, it sounds exactly the way my car was running when I first got it; prior to the injector overhaul.

 

I've started the TC-W3 fuel maintenance plan last week on everything I drive, and your right everything's running a lot smoother now.

Thx DP!

 

I hope you figured it out by now James.

 

Good to hear

 

Haven't messed with it any further. I'm also chasing intermittent AC problem in which the compressor won't engage and have a blown head gasket in my Civic I need to work on too. Plus of course I need to swap in my new engine on my turbo car. I plan to start on the Civic this weekend then get back on the Maximas. If the black VE doesn't strand me again I'll be fine with the cooler weather coming lol

 

Tell me about it. Now up pops a radiator leak from the top.

 

Well I drove this car for nearly a solid hour last night - by far the most I've driven it continuously since the overhaul.

I can't figure out why, but once the car has been driving for about 15-20 minutes it starts to get a general sense of slight bucking under moderate acceleration and even during a normal cruise. After this 15-20 minutes into it, about every other stop light I take off from it gives me very subtle bucking/loss of power. About 1/4 of the time I will get one very harsh buck - the type to throw me forward in the seat - when accelerating away from a stop light. Then the other 1/4 of the time it feels totally fine. When at a steady cruise going 45+ I can feel a very subtle bucking occasionally.

And it also totally died on me once in second gear during acceleration from a stop light. This was the middle of second gear going 25 miles an hour or so. Just flat out died after a second or two of totally unresponsive throttle response. It started right back up and drove fine the other 15-20 minutes but had the general subtle bucking/loss of power.

The strange thing is that my work commute is only 10 minutes, so to and from work the car drives flawlessly. Drive around any longer than that on an errand after work or something I start to get the bucking. I can't imagine what duration has to do with the way it runs. Because it's already totally warmed up even on my 10 minute commutes so I don't think it has anything to do with a cold vs operating temp deal.

I believe I have an extra MAF and will swap that in today just to see if it makes any difference. Some of these symptoms seem a little bad MAF-ish to me

 

Swapped the MAF today, still the same symptoms

 

Updating this again -

I've still been driving the car daily but it still continually has the intermittent slight bucking feel to it. It feels like what it's doing is totally losing power for a split second and then nearly immediately "catching" itself which gives it the slight bucking feeling. It does this under moderate acceleration and also during cruising.

It totally died on me 4 times today to and from lunch. Twice on the way to lunch and twice on the way from lunch back to the office. Both times actually in gear cruising 35+ mph. Two times it started right back up and the other two times it took some cranking (enough that I thought it wouldn't start back up and would be stranded) but did end up firing back up. Other than that it was doing the slight bucking feeling every few minutes.

This weekend I will put in my new TPS and check that and then swap in my old coil packs I removed from the car. These coil packs are all brand new so I can't imagine them being bad but you never know at this point.

 

I can't remember James; but did you say you checked the injectors?

 

They're brand new, but yes I did test them and they ohm out in spec

That's the super especially frustrating thing here. Everything is brand new. I bought all this stuff brand new specifically to rid myself of these types of issues for a good 10 years and here I am anyway

 

Welp I installed a brand new TPS yesterday. No improvement in the symptoms. Ugh

 

James, I just inboxed you. Check it out.

 

What do you mean by the distributor ground? VE's are distributorless. Do you mean that ground wire right near the CPS?

I'm about out of things to replace. My last resort will be to send my injectors out to get cleaned. The only thing I can think of is maybe they somehow got gummed up from my lake water gas/gas tank.

 

Yeah, it's grey and looks like a flat distributor, with the sensor attached to it yes, that.

 

ECM maybe? I don't remember reading if you tried another ECM

 

I haven't tried that but I do have a spare ECU (or two or three actually) so I will try that just to rule it out I suppose.