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I began driving my ST205 WRC in January 2005. The only problem that I had with the car was that every time I filled up the windscreen washer water bottle, the water simply leaked out of the bottle all over my driveway! So on Easter Monday (28/3/05) I decided to remove the washer bottle from the car to find the cause of the leak (I guessed that the problem would be a cracked bottle). This would also give me the opportunity to investigate the water injection (WI) and spray bar components on the WRC which I already knew a fair bit about from reading Dan Johnson’s site - www.st205.net Once I had marked up the various water lines, disconnected them and removed the washer bottle, it was easy to see the water injection motor, water spray bar and windscreen washer motors. Unfortunately I could not see any cracks in the washer bottle or lines, so my leak was obviously not coming from there! |
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As the bottle was out of the car, and the motors easy to get to, I thought that it would be interesting to test the WI and spray bar motors to see how they worked. I connected some wires to the terminals of the motors and then connected the wires up to the 12V car battery in my ST185CS I did some fiddling around, tested the battery and wires etc, but I could not get the motors to spin over or show any sign of coming to life. So I concluded from this that the WI and spray bar motors on the ST205WRC are DUMMIES! - see below |
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** UPDATE ** The pumps are working units and not dummies. It seems that either through lack of use or lack of protection the pumps corroded - see pictures of the spray bar pump The pump is listed as a "headlamp washer pump" part No. 85336-10010 ~£80 |
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Undeterred, I decided to carry on investigating the various WI lines |
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WI lines 1 and 2 both travel from the WI valve as shown, up inside the wheel arch dust cover and into the engine bay near the drivers side shock turret |
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Both lines then run along the standard strut brace and between the two middle chambers/runners of the intake manifold |
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WI line 1 then separates from line 2, where it travels under the intake manifold plenum chamber and into the WI sprayer located in the throttle body, just behind the throttle butterfly |
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WI line 2 travels downwards in front of the intake manifold, then it goes into a T piece. One of the lines out of the T piece then connects into a fitting on chamber/runner no. 1 of the intake manifold (which I presume is just blanked off/a dummy fitting) |
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The other line out of the T piece drops down under the head of the engine and into a dummy fitting in the centre of what my
EPC called the Idle Control Valve Once I had traced these lines and cleaned the washer bottle, I connected up all of the lines to their original locations and refitted the bottle While the dust covers where removed, I decided to fill up the bottle with washer fluid to try to find my leak – after all, the leak was the reason that I had removed the bottle in the first place! Once the bottle was full, I heard water pouring onto the floor, I looked down and I also had a wet foot! |
| The leak was coming from the spray bar valve, it turns out that the bung on the bottom of the valve had perished and rotted away. I sorted the leak by putting a new piece of tubing on the connection with a bolt blocking the other end. | |
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The water injection nozzle is mounted in the intake manifold, just underneath the throttle body, and looks something like this... Note the tiny hole in the end from which the water is sprayed - note that there are 2 holes, one on each side The assembly looks to be controlled in a similar fashion to a fuel injector - note the electrical connection on the bottom |
