The car's taken a second or so to shutdown ever since I got it about nine months ago (wow the time flies).
While running heav's suggestion of the miracle oil in a tank of diesel, the shutoff completely failed to function. It didn't shut off the first day, then that night it got pretty cold and shut down after a couple of seconds, and it hasn't shut down by itself since.
So today I finally got to looking at it. First order of business was to hook the ol' MityVac up to the shutoff valve. Let's just say I should have used an older hose 'cause the shiny new one is now full of oil.
Obviously, this puppy has gone bad. My questions, then, are thus:
It appears that I need this part, and gaskets are available separately, which add another $1.50 to the price so I might as well...
I'll wrap with the following fuel update: over the past 1700 miles I've put only 13 gallons of petroleum-based fuel into the car. Most of the rest of the fuel has been "virgin" soybean oil, but as of last week I've got my filter and pump and set of 55 gallon drums setup all in order and have been pumping used veggie oil from a couple of local restaurant friers. The car runs super smooth on this stuff, which is unsurprising because of the lubricity of vegetable oil (and the fact that even 5% biodiesel can return pump diesel to the same lubricity that it had with all of that gnarly sulfur).
thanks, as always. You guys are great.
-tom!