Mustang Wounded! And, almost caught on fire!

[StangFlyer]

What happened yesterday while driving my Mustang is almost unbelievable...

First, after putting the Mustang up for winter storage in perfect running order, I recently found it would not start when I went to fire it up a couple weeks ago. Rather frustrating to say the least. So, with some time to finally look into it yesterday I ended up finding that the MSD unit took a crap AND that the current set of plugs were fouled out from trying to start it. After two hours of changing plugs and bypassing the MSD unit the car fired right up. Ahhhh, the sound of power again.

Thus, I pulled her out and washed it up. Then, decided to go out for a little cruising around town. After about 30 minutes of tooling around the street I ended up hitting the e-way. I'm cruising along, doing about 70, just enjoying the ride when suddenly most of the power vanishes, the motor tone changes, and I could just tell something happened.

I didn't know what was going on at first, so I tried giving it a little throttle... but, it was like someone took four cylinders away. Suddenly white smoke appears around the front of the car and little speckles start appearing on the windshield. It was at about this time that I look over at my fuel pressure gauge to see that the fuel system is only at 20 psi!

Immediately I knew that something was going on with the fuel system, and fearing I was leaking fuel somehow I knew I had to get off the road ASAP. I was almost at an exit ramp onto another highway, and I headed off on it hoping to get to the nearest exit once I got onto it.

The exit, or on ramp for the other highway, is one of those long curved ramps. As soon as I started curving around it, going about 30 mph, suddenly my rearend just comes right out from under me and the whole car goes into a huge 360 spin! Of course, this was a total surprise and unexpected, so I'm working the wheel like mad trying to get the car back straight. After completely spinning around it headed off the road, mowed over one of those metal marker rods nailing the front valance, and I slid the car through the grass stopping it two feet from going into a big ditch where I would have most likely flipped the car over.

Needless to say I was totally freaked! Not knowing if the car would ignite from fuel, I unlocked my harnesses and got out as fast I could. I was also freaking out thinking the whole front of the car was probably trashed from nailing that metal rod. Fortunately, the car was not on fire... and, although the front facia is definitely toast (it is cracked and bent in and the drivers fog light is broken), it's not all that bad. It will need a new front fascia, fog lamps, and have it painted, of course. My guess is about $500. Otherwise, all is good.

Any ways, after getting under the hood I found that the front fuel injector on the drivers side was leaking fuel all over the place. Fortunately, I was able to get a hold of someone who brought tools out to where I was at. I removed the fuel rail brackets on that side and pulled the injector out to find that the top o-ring on the injector (the pressure side obviously) had a big chunk on one side gone. It must have dried out and crack... and, it just gave away from the pressure. The fuel coming out everywhere must have been dumping on the road. So, driving through it when I started going around the curve of the exit ramp, it was like hitting an oil slick... and, the rear tires just let go like I was on ice or something.

It's just crazy that a .35 cent o-ring almost trashed the Stang and probably almost caught me on fire. Is that flipping crazy or what?!