Slow Progress

Here's a compressed 10 second video summary of my month's activities on the Starion!

I haven't been looking at the car much, apart from 'looking' at it with a face of complete disgust and rage, every time I drive or walk past, with grinding teeth, etc. Fortunately, I haven't put a match to it - I did, however, smack the oil cap with a pair of mole grips. The cap disintegrated, and I spent 1/2 an hour getting the bits from inside. I also scratched the wing, as a semi accident. I didn't attempt to -avoid- scratching it, it just happened. It's not deep anyway. I can't help but think if I'd just bought that ECU from a bloke in Ireland on ebay and a new injector, I'd be driving this car. Having it running and -driving it- feels like a vague dream ... It's a very different car now, I don't look at it as a mode of transportation, more as some kind of disease, like a tumour or something. At least tumours don't take £1,500 of you, and lacerate your hands to shreds!

As a strange contradiction, I have put my Starion keys, BACK ON MY KEYRING. I keep losing them, and this adds to my fury, prior to wondering what the hell is (still) wrong with the stupid thing. Four months later, and it still sits on my parent's drive.

The past month has been spent occasionally starting the car and to be honest, getting the same results.
I have had a few interesting incidents, where I put the spark plugs on the wrong way (I was wondering why fire was coming out of the air filter pipe). I corrected this, and it's running rough.
I think a good mechanic with a bit of time could sort this out now. I'm not sure at all what is wrong with it. I changed the Knock Sensor when I received a load of bits from Australia, and haven't changed it back, maybe I should. I'm 99% certain it has nothing to do with that, but I've run out of ideas. I have set the whole thing back to standard. No dump valve or boost gauge. It's -how it was- when I bought it (only in worse condition).

I have removed the fuel tank and have put the fuel pump in the engine bay, bypassing the fuel lines and the filter (of which I have bought another of - over 100 pounds on fuel filters in three months). It's now sucking fuel out of a coke bottle. It sucks a lot. I'm not sure where it's going, but it glugs a whole 550ml bottle in seconds. Must be in the (short) fuel line ... until I went round the back, and saw it was pissing the whole lot out of the return pipe onto the floor! Wah!! The piccie to the left shows the coke bottle with rags around it (to stop it moving with the engine - and to create some kind of molotov-cocktail-esque blazing conflagration when it all goes wrong)
I'm not sure I want to put the tank back, so might actually put a 20l race tank in there, or a custom one made from aluminium with a Bosch pump.

At the moment the car isn't idling at all.

The car is actually for sale! If you want a nice clean Starion that doesn't work!

Can you see the wire running from the fuel pump to the connector in the back along the side?

My Astra sucessfully made another journey to London and back. I think the pump is on it's way out, as it's not doing well under load - or it could be spark plugs, as we have violent popping and flames from the exhaust over 4000 rpm - not good. Typically, it doesn't seem to bother it either way. :) I have so far completed over 70k miles in it!