Skoda Rally Blog

So, the idea was simple. Get a new fuel pump for the Felicia, and fit it, and then make the car go like a treat. Firstly, removing the pump from the tank wasn’t easy – it’s held in by what is like a big screw-on cap with a hole in the middle. It’s about 6″ in diameter, and really hard to turn, and that involved quite a bit of effort to move, even more so because the braided steel hoses for the fuel feed and return are in the way and have loose bits of stainless meaning I had lots of little puncture wounds. Lovely. Then removing the pump itself was quite interesting as there’s next to no clearance and it’s not immediately apparent how it comes out. Got there in the end, and as a bonus found out and fixed the problem with the fuel gauge sender. New pump fitted to the housing, and then back in the car, once I’d removed the 3 tonnes of grit and so on from the tank.

Fired it up and….. no difference whatsoever. Well, better than when it died on the Somerset, obviously, but still gutless. However, I have found out that the car has on-board diagnostics, which I have a cable for. I connected the laptop up, and found out about a few problems I already knew had happened at some point (memory of an elephant, this thing), but once cleared, there was “nothing wrong”! NOTHING WRONG? I guess there’s not a fault code that reads “Gutless piece of poo”. However, I had been over-estimating its abilities – there are a number of sensors it can’t notice are missing (unplugging the Lambda probe or the knock sensor wasn’t noticed), and unlike newer systems unplugging the injectors was something that the ECU didn’t notice at all. So I guess it can’t find everything out for me, and I’ll have more to do. It’s quite possible that the old engine I pulled from the car wasn’t that bad after all.

But there could be some good news. Maybe. I had a spare coil pack which I put on the car, and that made it run… even worse! It was really, totally gutless after that. So, it’s possible that the ‘good’ coil pack is also shot, to a lesser degree. So that’s my next port of call – I’ll order a new pack and see what difference this makes. At this point I’m really at the point where without another car to swap bits from I’m not sure what to do. G-reat.