soooo yea.. cars still not running... but it is home now!
Mechanic has been fired, his claims that he had cleaned out and prepped the fuel tank were lies and were the root cause of all the fuel system issues, numerous replacement fuel system components and generally crappy running, trying really hard to not think about the easily thousands wasted there. Before the car was towed from his shop the car has now gotten essentially an entirely new fuel system from tank to injectors.
But when he started tuning the mixture the timing chain tensioner on the left side let go... so i got a call asking permission to source and install oil pressured tensioners as found on the 3.0 Carrera, another thing I had suggested needed doing years ago but was told i dont know what im talking about. So a engine out teardown and rebuild later...
Car is in tune and running, but on the faulty ignition box, has about 15 min of runtime before the box begins to overheat and just shuts down. Mechanic claims he tried to get the CDI+ back on the car but now it suddenly and magically wont hold ignition timing, idle sputters and kicks, timing light shows spark jumping between high advance and retard (none of this have i been able to see for myself), but for the 15 min the original box is running the car runs beautifully. Mechanics immediate response to this situation was that he needed permission to buy a $2500 ignition box... I can source a refurb OEM for ~400
Attempting to source a spare ignition box for the short term so the car is drivable and having a backup. Trying to remotely diagnose what might be wrong is frustrating, but im trying to be responsible and work on the dissertation, instead of blowing off that to go fix the car. Probably wont get the car running any more often than the mechanic did, but at least we arent paying his 150-300% markup on parts to make up for the discounted labor hes graciously charged us