I've just joined the Group, having frequently visited the site for technical information. In August I purchased a 1971 280SL Pagoda, (originally a California car), which my wife and I finally collected last week from Holland and drove back to France.
Having left the mad traffic of Holland & Belgium behind, once we entered France we ducked off the motorway and drove on back roads through Champagne, the Rohne Valley and the Luberon back home in the South. We agreed that this was one of the most wonderful road trips we’ve ever done. Scenery, accommodation, food and wine were all outstanding!
In the first 2 days we covered over 1, 000 kilometres and the car behaved impeccably. On the 3rd day I pulled into a service station off the beaten track and filled up with 98 octane.
I remember thinking at the time that maybe I should wait and find a busier station, however not knowing how far to the next station, I took on about 40 litres of fuel.
About 1/2 an hour later and while cruising at about 50MPH and as I tried to accelerate the car started losing RPM. It was as if it was running out of fuel. I pulled off the road and as I slowed down the engine died. I restarted the car and it kicked in straight away, I revved the engine waited about 2 minutes and pulled off again. This story repeated itself for most of that day, and we kept having to pull off the road about 5 or 6 times as the car lost power at times, and then restarting after a few minutes and carrying on.
I ran a variety of possibilities though my head ranging from: contaminated fuel to faulty fuel pump, air lock in the tank, dirty injectors, faulty spark plugs......the car was fully serviced
before I collected it. I also can’t understand why we had covered 1, 000kms with no issues and then suddenly there was a problem.
Eventually I noticed that this problem occurred once the fuel got close to 1/2 a tank, so I kept filling the car up every 200 kilometres and had no further issues for the remaining 1, 000kms of our trip.
Once I arrived home, about 1, 900kms since Holland, I ran the fuel down to about 1/2 a tank and the problem started again. It went away once I filled it up. As soon as the tank’s full the car purrs along and is an absolute pleasure to drive, fully responsive and smooth!
Additionally, while inspecting under the hood I noticed that the ground wire from the coil was half snipped. I think this must have accidentally happened when they fitted a battery disconnect switch. I replaced the ground wire and thought that this may have been the problem.
However as mentioned above, as the car got to 1/2 tank of fuel the problem repeated itself again. Again as it starts losing RPM -it's as if it's running out of fuel-, I pull off the road and restart and all is fine again, until the next time....
The car is booked in to a local mechanic who works on older cars next week. I guess we’ll start by checking the fuel pump operation and then move onto the fuel tank filter...
I’ve ordered and received a replacement filter in case it’s clogged up.
I’ve spent hours searching through the forums on this website trying to track the problem down.
I would really appreciate any feedback or thoughts from those of you with more experience than I have on this issue.
To make things even more interesting, I’m also about to undertake the daunting task of registering the car on French plates. The amount of red tape and paperwork required are absolutely mind numbing!
Thanks in advance.
Mike
