FMPriusL, LOL

Nothing has ever been easy for me. Seems like everything I've ever tried in life has been a solid buttkick. It's led to me to a ying/yang philosophy on life that no longer sees things as easy or hard - that usage was for y'all's benefit. Life just is. And yesterday, life just was a PITA, lol. So much for intellectual honesty.

I like sharing my stories of self-abuse. Really, you should see my woeful history on the Ford diesel forum - I have 6 of those too and spend more time working on them because I use them more. But, y'all get to hear some too, like yesterday.

I'm trying to get a car back together that was in a small front end collision. I had a parts car with everything I needed, just have to swap it all over and repaint. But there was a little engine damage - the air filter/ map, OCV and main power cable were damaged. Got all that, then it doesn't start. No biggie. I start swapping plugs, injectors, coils to see if one fixes it.

I was doing them one at a time, and getting nowhere. I was using known-good parts, but from a car with no battery so I couldn't reverse the process to test whether the project car's parts worked in the running enging. So, I switched to one of my running cars and quickly determined that the injectors from my project car cause the same no-run symptoms in my running car. Put that car's inectors into the project car and now it runs. Buy some more injectors and put those in my running car. Now both cars run fine.

Except that they're leaking along the fuel rail, both cars. Confession: I try to replace injectors without disconnecting the fuel line and removing the fuel rail from the vehicle. I've been able to just lift up on the fuel rail enough to get that #4 injector back in and the rest have more room. But not this time, on either car, or at least not without messing something up - several times now, on each car.

I've managed to tear several o-rings and even though I have a comprehensive o-ring kit with probably 20 different sizes, and even though one size is the same diameter of these o-rings, the OEM rings seem thicker. And several grommets at the bottom were smashed and distorted, so I went to the stealership. $40 for 2 o-rings and 4 grommets. Total net weight, less than1/2 oz. That's some high-dollar rubber.

Still, I'm leaking One injector seems to slide in/out of the fuel rail without friction. I can't imagine it not leaking, and it does. Those #4 injectors, on the other hand, don't want to push all the way in for nothing.

So, anyway, looks like I just need to break down and remove the fuel rail completely, so I can make sure the orings don't distort as I push the injectors in - the way the service manual says to do it. So now, the funny part.

While doing all that, I get a response to my ad seliing these cars. Folks want to come over right now. I got my best Prius and this one I'm using to test these injectors listed online, but I'm hoping to sell the one I'm working on because the other one is my best one, a one-owner, garaged-every-night, cherry. I wanted to keep it.

But I can't really push this one because it's leaking right now. Not that it probably would have worked - the lady wanted the nice one, and didn't think about it more than a minute. Paid my asking price and drove it away.

Except now I'm stuck here without a car to drive until I can get this one to quit leaking. And it's blocking my truck in, so I can't get out to go buy more $40 o-rings. You're listening to a bachelor who eats every meal away from home. I don't even have silverware, plates or glasses. I'm starving here, lol

Then, my luck, the lady who bought the car for her daughter...I've driven that car for months without problems. Drives like a new car, really. Yet, the daughter drains the 12v battery down within hours. probably sitting in the driveway with the stereo on. And I'm sounding like a mooch because I have no way to drive over there to jump her and charge it.

Well, the good news is both my cars are good and I sold the other for a nice profit to some people who are going to be great owners of a beautiful car.