Spoke with my DeLorean's owner from the 90's

The previous owner of my DeLorean did an excellent job in documenting all of the repairs and upgrades that he completed by keeping all of the receipts. I have kept up with this as well and have a long Google Sheet full of all previous parts purchased, so I have an accurate picture of what's been done from 2007 to the present. Unfortunately, I know very little about the history of VIN 02087 prior to the previous owner, who was located in Mississippi. A vehicle history report that I purchased during the negotiations of my car didn't show any history of ownership prior to 2006, but did show that the previous owner bought it from someone located in Wisconsin. 

During my effort of documenting all previous work, I found a plastic sleeve with various service records from 1990 through 1992 with the owner's name on the documents, including a Florida Vehicle Registration Certificate from 1990. I started Googling information about the previous owner. There were actually two different names listed in the various service records, both men, but I discovered that one of the people in the records had passed away in 2007 in Naples, FL. I found his obituary and discovered another name in the obit for his son, Terry, from Wisconsin that was listed in some of the service records. 

After doing some more digging online, I was able to track down a couple of possible phone numbers for his son and decided to give them a try. The first number I tried was no longer in service, but the 2nd number was still good and I was able to leave a message explaining that I was looking for the previous owner of my DeLorean and to give me a call back if I had the right person.

Later that day, I got a call back from Terry, a very nice man now in his 80's, who was the true owner of the car back in the 90's. He actually had owned two DeLoreans at the same time back in the day, so he didn't know which of the two that I had. I understand that he had one car with him in Wisconsin that he drove a lot, while the other one he kept at his father's place in Florida, which had to be the one that I had. He didn't recall a lot of specific details about my car, but I brought up some of the service records that I had found, including one from the now defunct DeLorean One in Houston, TX. He recalled that he had shipped the car to Texas to be worked on in the 90's, and from the looks of the records, he spent a lot of money making sure the car was in good condition. 

 I can't tell if the documents I have are for quoting purposes only, or if everything listed was indeed completed. Above are pictures of the registration card, and service records for a couple of shops in FL. If it was all done, he spent a small fortune just at DeLorean One (shown in a previous blog post), which was over $14k in the early 90's. The records also show that it had 43k miles at that time, just a few thousand more from the service records from 1990. 

He didn't remember who he ended up selling the car to, but it must have been to someone else in Wisconsin as that appears to be where the previous owner bought the car from back in 2007. The strange thing is that from 1992 to 2007, the car was only driven a few thousand miles as it only had 49,800 miles when I bought it in 2011. I contacted the previous owner to see what details he could recall about the former owner, but I haven't heard anything back yet.

Terry was a very fun guy to talk to who has led an interesting life. Even though he's in his 80's, he still owns and drives a Ferrari 360, has owned and flown several planes, and has owned so many various cars over the years that I wasn't too surprised that he didn't recall too many details about my DeLorean. I'm glad I took the time to track him down and speak with him before it was too late. If I am able to track down any more historical details about my car, I'll come back and post an update.

Replaced original DeLorean fuel accumulator

Back in 2020, I got together with several local DeLorean owners for a tech session. We were bouncing ideas off one another on how we've approached various issues with our cars and future issues we wanted to tackle. One of mine happened to be my hard starting problem that was introduced when I replaced my original fuel lines back in 2016. It would run really rough for a while when cold starting, but would just crank endlessly when trying to start the car when it was hot. 

One of the other owners suggested that it would be good to replace the fuel accumulator as its job is to maintain pressure in the fuel line after the car is shut off so as to prevent the fuel in the lines from vaporizing, creating a vapor lock, or hot start problem.

Pictures of the accumulator and a search of the stack of service records I have, confirmed that the fuel accumulator was original. 

The white material around one of the fuel hoses above is what is exposed after the black rubber layer wears off. The black hose on the left was what it used to look like. I couldn't believe how far gone the hose on the right had become. I ordered a new fuel accumulator and hoses back in May of 2020, but just got around to installing it a year later.

I had heard that this job was a bit difficult, but I found several resources that helped me do things in the right order, including this PDF. I had my DeLorean on jack stands in the front and in the back so it was high enough off the ground for me to comfortably work on it from underneath. This job definitely cannot be done any other way than from under the car. You'll also want to wear safety glasses as debris may fall into your face as you work under the car. You'll also want a small bucket to catch the fuel that will drain out of the lines once you have them disconnected.

As I dove it, I first tried to loosen the nut on the hard line coming into the accumulator with a 17mm stubby wrench. The nut was so tight that I had to get a breaker bar on the end of the stubby wrench to get enough torque to break it loose. That was probably the most difficult part of the whole job. Then I was then able to remove the four 10mm bolts holding the retaining strap. So with the strap out of the way and the nut off of the hard line, I discovered that the hard line was not budging from the elbow fitting. I had to wiggle the accumulator and fight it to finally break free the hard line from the elbow connector, even though the nut was out of the way. I guess 40 years being together made them so they didn't want to be separated. 

Once I had the hard line separated, I was able to pull the fuel accumulator through the hole in the frame so that it was hanging down, shown above. I then tried to remove the fuel lines that were still connected to the accumulator. Where they both connect near the top of the frame, there weren't clamps securing them on, but they just slipped onto the fittings, which I thought meant that they would be easy to get off. I was very much mistaken. As much pulling and twisting that I did, it did nothing except stretch the original plastic fuel line that is under the rubber and white layers. The old line was so old that it had no flexibility left to be able to pull it off. I ended up having to get a box cutter blade and I sliced the line down the fitting to finally get them to let loose. Here's one of the lines after I got it out:

 

 

As I worked to get both of the lines out, virtually any remaining rubber coating on the lines disintegrated in my hand and either fell into my face, or fell into the frame tunnel. After I got the accumulator out, I swapped over the elbow fitting for the hard line from the old to the new accumulator and hooked up the new rubber fuel hoses and attached the new black accumulator pad where the retaining strap holds onto the accumulator. Below, you can see the old and new parts next to each other, as well as the stubby wrench that is a must-have to do this job more easily:

 

Putting it all back in the car was pretty straightforward. The worst part was just trying to keep the accumulator in the right position while I tried to get the four 10mm bolts started on the retaining strap. Before doing that, I hooked up the new rubber lines to their respective lines at the top of the frame, and tightened their new hose clamps. I also hooked up the hard line to the elbow fitting, but do not tighten the hard line nut yet. You just need to get it started so it helps get everything into position.

Next, you need to reattach the retaining strap, making sure the accumulator is in the right position, then tighten them down the four 10mm bolts. Once the retaining strap is completely secure, you can tighten down the hard line nut. I once again found it difficult to get enough torque on the hard line nut with just my hands, so used the breaker bar to make sure it was nice and snug. I then made sure the new rubber fuel lines weren't rubbing on any of the shift linkage and moved one of them out of the way with a zip tie.

 

 

I snapped a photo into the frame tunnel to see how dirty it was and was glad to see it was virtually rust free. The debris you see at the bottom includes much of the remains of the original rubber coating on the fuel line that was just the cloth coating. I did what I could to get that cleaned from out of the frame tunnel, but didn't worry too much about it. The only way to visually inspect this part of the frame is to do something like this with a camera. 

 

I had a delay in testing for leaks as I also decided to put in a new, modern fuel pump at the same time, but I was happy and relieved that when it came time to fire up the car again, there weren't any leaks and my issues I was having with the car not wanting to start have disappeared. Here are a few more pics of the final install:

In all, because of the extra time it took for me to figure out how to loosen the hard line nut, get the hard line loose from the elbow fitting, and getting the original rubber lines off of their fittings, it took me much longer than the one hour estimate that I had heard it would take. So if you're going to tackle this project, learn from my issues and you will hopefully get it done in less time. I don't know the exact amount of time that it took me, but I estimate it was about 2.5 hours.