There was a classic car breakfast meet at Battlesbridge today and I decided to take the Zetec Cortina to see if had cured my recent running issues. I left my house around 8.15 and made my way down there. I didn't get very far, just past Rayleigh on the A127 in fact, when the car started losing power and mis-firing. In fact it started playing up while I was in the Rayleigh underpass and that's somewhere where you don't want be breaking down as there are no lay-bys or emergency pull ins.
I managed to nurse it out of the underpass and keep it going for a bit longer, but then it just cut out and died. At this point I was facing down hill, so I just let it coast until I reached the 'My Place' cafe and pulled in away from the dual carriageway. I tried starting the car but it just wasn't having it at all. It had never done this before. It had run sick for a little while, but had never died completely and refused to start.
So, I rang recovery and prepared myself for a long wait. To my surprise though after ten minutes I received a phone call from the recovery man asking exactly where I was. Due to me being on a fast dual carriageway he had to collect me and the car and take us to a safe place. Well, I was only about 2 miles away from home, so that made the most sense as a safe place. This was the second time since June that one of my cars has had to be recovered. I'm not having the best of years!
Once home, I played musical cars again and moved the Cortina into the garage. Because of all of the electronics and fuel injection on this car, I don't really know what to look for when there's a problem so I just started with the basics and checked for a spark. The spark was good and strong, so no problems there.
When it was being recovered and up at an angle (like in the pic above) I noticed that fuel was leaking from under the rear valance. At the time I just put it down to that fact the tank was very full and that the fuel was just coming out of the overflow due to the angle. On reflection though, I decided to investigate this further. I'm glad I did because I discovered a split fuel hose just before the in-line tap that I had fitted a few weeks previous.
I've no idea why it split, but after replacing it with another piece of fuel line, the car started and ran fine!
So it's very probable that because the fuel line split, the fuel pressure would have dropped, which would have then caused the injectors to close and therefore starve the car of fuel causing it to break down. Plus air would have been getting into the fuel system as well. This fuel line was new as well, so I need to look at getting some stronger stuff if possible. I can't have this happening every time I try and go somewhere!
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