Spurred on by the success of that brake light install, I was delighted when the new fuel filter arrived today. I was very hopeful that I'd finally get to the bottom of this air leak that was making the car undriveable. Fitting the new filter gave me a eureka moment on the fuel pipe routing between injector pump and fuel filter housing so I finally resolved that. Everything is a bit snug, but nothing is kinked or chafing so that'll do me fine. The filter isn't on upside down, that's the only way up it goes, for some reason the print on it is upside down to usual. The new seals with the new filter fitted very well and, after bleeding the air out and priming the system, the car did eventually start and none of this leaked.

Then it stopped running. It was an absolute bear to get going again, much worse than usual, and I was having trouble getting it to idle long enough for me to get my eyeballs and earholes into the engine bay to try and find any visual or audible leaks. One injector looked a bit damp, but that soon dried off, I couldn't see any diesel coming up from the engine side, or down from the pipe side so I'm not sure what that's about, maybe a duff injector seal?

I triple checked every connection, every hose, trying to find somewhere the air was getting in or diesel was getting out and there just wasn't anything to see. I wondered if it just needed a bit of a blat up and down the street to maybe clear some air out so after checking for the umpteenth time that there were no leaks, I did that. Particularly pleased at how much better the ANT brand (never heard of them before) fuel filter and seals seem to fit than the FRAM one I had on there previously. Pretty disappointed with the FRAM one in all honesty.

Anyway, the car would run if you held the gears and gave it a lot of throttle, come off the throttle too quick and it would just die, whether you were at idle or not. Then it just wouldn't want to restart at all. At one point it was so unwilling to start I began to wonder if I was going to have to push it home and then it started chugging slowly and puffing clouds of smoke, and then very suddenly decided it was fine and set off quite happily. It's impossible to drive now. Parked up, the car died before I even got my hand near the ignition key, and checked for leaks again. This time I found that all under the injector pump is wet with diesel. It's not pouring out, it's just a constant weep here. Also, on some of the attempts to reprime I could hear the telltale squeak of air being sucked in somewhere in the vicinity of the pump, it wasn't the fuel filter like before, the nose was definitely coming from the injector pump on the fuel inlet side of it so I suspect that's where the leak is.

I also had a dig in the kitchen for a potato so I could take a video of it running for diagnostic purposes. If I had an apple I would have used that instead, I hear they do better quality video.