Fixing the old DeLorean smell

 From the first time I sat in my DeLorean when I bought it in 2011, I couldn't help but notice its distinctive "old car" smell. I didn't mind it too much as it was part of what made it what it was. However, I knew that I would eventually do something to alleviate some of the strong aroma since I would walk away smelling like the car anytime I drove it.

Like many other owners, I determined that some of the unique smell was coming from the original insulation material located under the carpet on the parcel shelf behind the seats. This material originally had a rubber covering on it, but the rubber on mine was removed before I owned the car. As you can see below, some of mine was already starting to come apart.

 

Some owners have removed the insulation, which looks suspiciously like carpet padding, and gone to such lengths as to cover their entire fiberglass tubs with Dynamat, or other similar products. I wasn't looking to go to such lengths at this point. As time went on, my wife and I happened to be adding new carpet to our house, and I decided to snag some extra padding to use to replace the padding on the DeLorean's parcel shelf. First, I took out the old stuff.

It was on there pretty good with whatever adhesive was used before, but with a little patience, elbow grease, and acetone, it cleaned up nicely for the new padding that I added. I just cut the new padding to size and stuck it on there. This was several years ago, and for the life of me, I don't recall if I even used adhesive to permanently adhere the new padding, or if I just laid it there loosely. If I ever go into that area again, I'll see what I did and take some "after" photos. 

I am happy to report that the strong stench did greatly diminish. It isn't entirely gone, but I imagine that some of the other old materials in the car either held onto the smell from the old insulation, or those materials themselves are also emitting their own stench. 

Several owners have completely removed their interiors and washed them down, including the carpets, which I imagine would be a tremendous help. If I ever have a need to completely disassemble my interior, I'll join that club.

New DeLorean fuel lines

I can't believe that it has been nearly FIVE YEARS since my last progress post, but I have had way more important things going on. For example, here are a few things that have taken priority:

• Had two more kids, for a grand total of four
• Finished the basement of our house
• Improved my employment situation
• Overhauled my '99 Jeep Cherokee's steering, suspension, and cooling system
  
• Got tired of being overweight and started working out regularly since 2018
• Re-landscaped my entire front and backyard, including an in-ground trampoline, a flag pole, over 10 new trees, flowers shrubs, garden boxes, ground fabric, mulch, curbing, sprinklers, fire pit, basketball court, etc. that took two years to complete
• Put epoxy on our home garage floor
  
• Built a backyard deck with a pitched roof
• And more
  

In other words, the DeLorean has been low on the list of things needing my immediate attention. Going through pictures over the last several years made me realize that I did in fact spend time working on the car, but simply failed to post about it.  

Unbelievably, I've been dealing with issues getting the car to start reliably after I replaced the original fuel lines back in 2016. I replaced them out of caution since the fuel lines were original, but I wasn't have any problems until after I swapped them out. Go figure, right? I bought a SS fuel line kit from DeLorean Performance Industries, and the lines appeared to be made well. I replaced one line at a time, so I knew that the lines were in the right locations, but the car ran really rough for the first minute or so, but then smoothed out and ran great.

The issues didn't go away though as it has not been easy to start in most conditions. If cold, it will usually start the easiest. If it was just turned off, then it will fire right back up. If it was hot, either outside or from running the engine, and if more than about 10 minutes have passed, it will just crank and crank and not start. I have literally sat in a parking lot while out doing errands for over an hour trying to get the car to start. Once I do get it to start, however, it seems to run fine with good power and no other issues.

This may also be one reason that I haven't driven the car much, unless I could drive it and return home all in the same trip without turning off the car for very long to avoid being stranded. Here are some pics I took when I was double checking that I had all the lines hooked up correctly:

 

 

Here's a video I took after the lines were installed while the car was running so I could document any leaks or other things that looked out of place. Everything appeared to be fine, visually.

 

I suspected that something was causing the car to lose fuel pressure after shutting off, causing a form of vapor lock in the heat. One quick way to test pressure in the system is to see how much effort it takes to press down the fuel metering plate under the air intake. This first clip shows how bouncy and how little resistance there is on the plate:

 

After running the car, you can see how much more pressure there is, meaning it isn't as easy to push it down:

How long that pressure is there indicates how long the car is holding fuel pressure, or at least that's how I understood it.

 

In the process of trying to figure out the problem, I discovered a fuel leak coming from the fuel filter. It was weeping out from where the hard line connects to the bottom of the filter. I had that torqued down as hard as I could and the fitting still leaked. This is not an uncommon problem, and DeLorean Performance Industries was able to provide me with a new fitting and fuel filter. The original hard line had to be cut near the filter, then the new fitting went in its place. Here's the old fitting after I cut it off from the hard line:

 

 

 

Here are the shiny new parts that I installed to fix the leak:

Here is the repaired fuel line using the new parts that fixed the leak:

 

Unfortunately, that fix did nothing to solve my starting issues, which I am still dealing with to this day. But there is hope on the horizon. After getting together with a group of local owners last summer and troubleshooting my issue, the consensus was that I should go ahead and replace the fuel accumulator, which is responsible for maintaining fuel pressure in the lines after the car is shut off. I have no record of a PO replacing that, and based on the pictures, it looks to be very, very old:

I was able to source a Bosch unit from RockAuto.com, then got some new lines that attach to the accumulator from DeLorean Go. I have all those parts in hand, but haven't made it a priority to tackle that job yet. Fingers are crossed that this will be the silver bullet to fixing the starting problems. If not, we'll see if any new symptoms appear.