had a jaguar towed in last week. the guy said he drives it once, maybe twice a month. the battery was dead. that was his only complaint.
i push it in the bay.....it took three of us. these dam things DO NOT like to roll. anyway, get it in, after charging the battery for an hour....no start, no crank.....so the battery isn;t taking a charge....it's about 20F outside, and there ain't no way in hell i'm changing that battery outside.
inside, catch my breath, put a new battery in it, and fire it up. and TRY to fire it up. and again. and again. WTF?? i check it for any sort of security system, it has none. i stop here, and call the customer.
i asked him again....did this thing run before? he insists that it did, so i told him it didn't run now. are you sure that you've driven it recently? he insists yes, and that it ran perfectly. i get the ok from him to diagnose why it now will crank forever, but not start. got spark, got injector pulse, got unrestricted airflow, and got fuel pressure.
pull the feed line off at the pressure regulator, stick the end in a clean jug, and crank. whatever the hell came out of there wasn't gas.
another phone call to the customer. are you
sure this thing ran well? he still insists it did, and asks me what i found. i explain to him that i pumped more water through the pump than gas, and insisted on his coming down to the shop to see it.(i like being able to show customers....visuals do more than anything i could say).
he gets to the shop(meanwhile i'm perusing the old receipts from the previous shop he used to use, finding one mentioning running rough going uphill), and i show him the jug with about 10 ounces of stuff from his car. about 8 ounces were water.
he gives me the ok to drain the tank, and flush his entire fuel system out. talking to him after he gave me the ok, he mentions what i found in the receipt. about running rough.(duh!!)
15 gallons of fuel from the tank....nearly 2 full gallons of water in it. even once it separated from the water, the color was just wrong.....too dark. contaminated. i pull the fuel filter off, run air through that line, and dump a gallon in the tank, and with the fuel pump outlet in a jug again, i crank the engine...more water.
it appeared that jaguars ingenious design of a fuel(petrol) filler on top with NO FRIGGING WEATHERSTRIPPING was the culprit(combined with a bad gas cap). the water appears to be allowed into the well by design, and then drained out through a drain tube slightly smaller than a bic pen. that clogged...so every time it rained, water was introduced into the tank.
he picked it up today, nice and happy.
what's wrong with this picture? this is what was drained from the fuel filter.
