Okay, so after several months of on-again, off again (not like THAT
) work on the car, I've finally gotten it back on the road and running better than ever.
I can't say for certain what caused the highway stall shenanigans detailed in my opening post as I replaced so many ignition components at once.
1) had Bosch CDI rebuilt by Bob Ashlock (thanks to Ken - gsxrken - for that suggestion) - great, fast service and excellent communication.
2) replaced entire distributor coaxial cable - originally just planned to replace a section closest to the distributor using the available, shortie section of wire and Dennis' (timmy2) install kit (another excellent guy to deal with), but found that much more of the wire was damaged than I originally thought, so ordered some appropriate sized wire from Amazon (B. Ashlock advised regarding size/type), ran that from the CDI plug, though the wire harness sheath and then installed new, short section of Porsche wire to that using Dennis's install kit. Works perfectly, but was fairly difficult to do. BTW - this involves removing the distributor.
3) New coil (replica Bosch) from ************ - really neat piece and an excellent alternative to the garbage Bosch silver coils.
4) New cut-off delay relay - first time that feature has worked, but no real run-on to speak of so I would say that means my injectors are not leaking following shutdown. Interesting though, that for the fist time in almost ten years, my fuel pumps energize for a quick second with just the key in the on position - not sure if that is due to this relay or the yellow, overboost relay (also new).
5) New overboost relay (the yellow one).
6) Opened, inspected and cleaned pins of speed relay under driver's seat (the rev limiter on later model Turbos)
7) Every electrical connection I could spot that has to do with ignition or fuel pumps function was cleaned and re-assembled with silver conductive grease.
* While I was in there (not like THAT
):
1) Replaced cracked and degraded gearbox support bushings with those sweet, two-piece ones from Rebel Racing - ordered online and had them in about three days. Removed old bushings with propane torch.
2) Replaced all fuel delivery and return hoses that go from the firewall to the fuel pump, fuel distributor, and fuel accumulator. That was a pretty big job with the engine in the car and wanting to take care not to damage the tunnel lines in the process. All of the fittings were in good shape so I just took the hoses to a local, old school hydraulic shop that I've used for around 20 years and had them re-hosed there with appropriate injection hose.
All in all a lot of work, but am happy with the results so far (pulls like a freight train, putters around just fine, and idles perfectly with great AFRs in all conditions).
A big thanks to Jeff (JeffNJ) for tolerating my many text messages about this, and for helping sort out a coil wiring situation where I dumbly did not label my "removal drawing" correctly, and also verifying the orientation of the Rebel bushings.
And another big thanks to Kevin for his general, text camaraderie and encouragement the past couple of months.
***forum dating*** I know!!!!
PS - EFI is still in my future - I have serious size envy of the guys with the big (
) power, EFI builds!