The first day involved taking our normal Sunday morning family gathering and asking a few of the kids if they liked the idea of cool fast cars and skipping school. Not surprisingly they all said yes. Then the older and younger ones got involved and we all went out to poke at the car. My father pointed out to my siblings that this was akin to offering their kids "just a little bit of heroin" but they were fine with the idea as well.
The car at my house right now is the Marks Garage Sale MR2 so it was the first victim.
Mark bought the car as one of his many projects and spent some time thinking about what he wanted to do. He went all the way to the point of printing out multiple articles and jotting down some ideas about the direction of the build and then parked it. It was many years later before I pulled the collapsed shelter off of it, dug it out, threw some dodge steelies on it, and dragged it onto my trailer. Then when I got it home I couldn't resist seeing if it would run. I threw a battery on it, cranked it, and it came to life with a LOUD high idle and really stinky smokey exhaust. I goosed it a few times and then pinned the throttle to the floor-where it stayed. The car spun out the tach with glorious non-neighborhood friendly noises while I quickly killed it with the key. After that I couldn't get it to start again and ended up pushing it to where it sat until last night.
Today started with me giving the army of kids the basics of cars needing air, fuel, and spark and proceeded to chase fuel. I knew it had run but the gas was really really old and smelly so I assumed we would need to pull the tank and clean it out but I wanted to show them some life and loud noises so we proceeded to take 2 cars worth of 8-17 year olds to the gas station to fill the gas can and parts store for some starter fluid.
Unfortunately the starter fluid did nothing. We added a couple gallons of gas because the tank sounded empty. Using a better battery to crank faster didn't help. Around then we lost the crowd and it settled into me and my son. We verified spark. Then I decided to check fuel pressure and pulled the return line which just barely oozed fluid. Then we pulled the fuel filter that was installed backwards and checked the flow and got great flow straight from the tank. We decided to empty most of the tank using the fuel pump and the fuel filter feed line (apparently this year MR2 didn't have a drain plug in the tank). That's when things got amusing.
The car has an industrial looking aluminum scoop on the side that feeds a dryer tube to a curved attachment to the MAF.
I pulled the dryer line from the scoop to the MAF early on to be able to squirt starter fluid in past the MAF and also to be able to use the MAF door to trigger the fuel pump. Somewhere along the way I moved the tube and noticed the acorn residue in the creases:
It dawned on me at that time that acorn residue was probably not great for an engine and I even gave my son a lecture on air filters being great at keeping rodents from filling your engine with acorn parts but I got distracted and kept chasing draining the tank. After draining the tank we were talking and my brain started pondering what damage acorn residue could do to and engine and whether TVIS worked in a way that it could get stuck on small bits of shell so I pulled the MAF to take a look.
Opening the throttle plate reveals no trace of nuts so apparently in they went.
Lol-I have given the air, fuel, spark talk many times but never once had air be an issue. Apparently pegging the tach with a stuck throttle sucked the intake tube clean and now I have some sort of mouse nest acorn pile embedded in my intake. Next step is to pull the intake and see what damage was done. It will be a new experience for all of us.
Later this week I bring the PLB MR2 home and see if maybe thats a better path.