[kwilford]

I was doing a bit of restoration on my '75 SportWagon's fuel injection system this week, and I thought I would share some of my findings.

This car has the factory L-Jetronic EFI found on all '75 Opels imported into North America. I was told that it worked very well by the car's previous owner (Kat McCoy) when she drove it last year, but it was probably just in comparison to the numerous other faults that this car (a salvage rescue) had. And the Solex she had on her GT! I have discussed some of what I have found in other threads, but so far the biggest problems have been related to the very badly worn engine. I should be careful what I say, since I haven't really gotten into much of the rest of the car yet. I know the battery box needs replacing (I have a test repair kit from Charles Goin, but that will have to wait until spring). I have gone through the transmission, and bought a new clutch set and re-faced the flywheel. I know the steering rack needs new boots, which I have, and I have a spare rack and new ball joints and tie rod ends. But the wiring is still a MESS (!!). I know that as I dig more, I will find more. And so it goes...

Since the engine is due to be returned from the machine shop next month (new head, decked, with reconditioned valves, hardened valve inserts and brass valve guides; decked, bored and line-bored block; new cam; new lifters; new over-size forged high compression pistons; ground crank; all new bearings; new re-conditioned rods; new timing chain and tensioners; everything balanced; etc, etc, etc ad nauseum...), I thought I would get the fuel injection system in shape before the engine came back.

The first thing was to strip the FI system down and clean it. The AFM is still in the car, under a cover outside in the BLOODY cold weather, so it will wait until warmer days. Maybe when the GT heads off to the paint shop. The thing to do now was to get after the engine-mounted parts. Because it was on an engine that was quite worn-out, it was badly fouled due to oil coming through the EGR and PCV systems. The inside of the manifold was CAKED with carbon and oil, which resisted a couple hours of cleaning in my solvent bath. So, I have sent the intake manifold out to get hot tanked and bead blasted.

But there were also a lot of worn parts, most notably the linkage; the linkage roller bushing is worn out, as is the shaft bushing. I will see if I can get proper roller bearings to replace the delrin bushings. Interestingly, in almost every place a spring was mounted, the hole in the brackets are almost (or even entirely!) worn through. So I had to weld up every bracket and re-drill the holes. (I also lost one of the two throttle springs, so if anyone has a spare...).

And one of the bakelite fuel injector mounting bases had a stripped thread (the bolt that holds the injectors in place). So I installed Heli-coils in both plates. Much better than threads in bakelite (which is like a low-tech hard plastic). I will need new O-ring kits, but I see OGTS has them listed (and I believe that they are very common, since all Bosch MPI injectors of this type uses the same O-rings)

Most of the linkage had been Cadmium plated at one time, but it was all pretty much corroded away. So I wire brushed the rust away and painted it all with high-temp flat-black engine paint. Not as nice as powder coating, POR-15 or chrome, but it looks quite serviceable.

Next on my list is to find some rebuilt or new injectors. I did some interesting web surfing tonight (which led me back to this thread) so I will share that info in a later post.

Here are some photos, and more will come as the repairs continue: