Car died tonight...I don't think I want to fix it...
 

WTF? So I head out after school, meet a friend for a beer and head home.
Driving normally, no boost or anything I cruise to a stop and notice the smell of fuel...car seems to be running a bit rich. Light turns green, I get to 3rd gear (granny shifting at like 2.5k) and it loses power. I give it more throttle but nothing happens. It felt like I turned the key off. I try applying throttle again and get a loud backfire from the exhaust. I decide to pull over.

Once stopped I tried cranking the car. It turns over fine. Had a friend come help me and here are the observations-

Car has spark
Car has fuel
Checked all visible conectors
Plugs look normal
Cams turn over (not a broken t-belt)
Turning engine over results in nothing but the sound of an engine turning over
Turning engine over with throttle depressed 100% results in car huffing at times like it wants to fire......like a flooded engine....but it never fires. Tach slightly dithers at times.
Verified fuel pump primes when the key is turned on
Car was not having any problems when this happened..no over heating, oil leaks, coolant leaks, smoke....nothing.

This happened just before 11pm...and by the time I was done getting the car towed, I finally settled down to write this at 2:30am...I fuking tired and I don't know how motivated I am to figure this out. FML. At least I was on a surface street that wasn't busy and only 13 miles from home...and not on the interstate or far from home. Tow damage- $127.

Connect to the Hydra and see if you have RPM.

Fuck Hydra.

Hmm, sounds similar to an issue I had, when the fuel pump wasnt working. Can you jump it to keep it on like you can with NAs? I know you said you heard it priming, but worth a shot. Also worth a shot is plugging in a stock ecu and seeing if anything changes.

Jumped time?

I wish i had a better suggestion, you covered most the basics.

Had the same exact same problems when my CAS died

Same symptoms when I had cops problems (slight bit of oil on cops power wire connection). Car ran fine but would intermittently loose all power, I could always eventually get it going but there was often a large backfire (like an air bomb firecracker) just prior to functionality returning.

Mine was flooding due to intermittent spark and smelled like fuel before dying, the root cause was a small VC gasket knick that seeped oil onto cops wiring.

If you know you have spark, try unplugging the injector harness and crank. If it fires on what's in the cylinders, that suggests to me you may have an over fuelling issue (injectors / fpr), at a minimum it will clear your flooding (if that's the case).

Does it feel like it turns over faster than normal?

Did you hit a bump in the road when this happened?

I had a problem that seemed like the relay under the column (forget what it's called off the top of my head). Ended up being one of the relays in the fuse box being loose. The female contacts wore over time and were loose on the relay. Caused intermittent headaches for a good year.

I'm guessing fuel delivery.

Just hooked up the laptop- saw rpm when cranking and afrs dropped to 10 when cranking. Got one backfire when cranking. Damn. Was hoping to see no rpm or something that might make this easy.

I'm about to put like $300 up to who can come over and get the car running :/

Check your rectum for abrasions.

You need to get AAA. For less then $100 a year you can get free towing for up to 100 miles. Would have easily paid for this one tow.

Can you get a datalog and a video of you trying to start the car?

you smelled fuel and see AFRs go pigrich and it backfires...

this is a returnless system?

Yes, typical NB stock fuel system sans RC550s.

As for the tow- My insurance will reimburse me for the bill, so I'm not worried about it.

Will get video of the car trying to start when I get home.

I'm going to grab a compression tester just to make sure and pull the vc and timing covers off to make sure timing is on. This is strangely like what happened 2 years ago when I replaced the engine :( (I still don't know what happened to that engine- it had OK compression but wouldn't start).

Will try connecting the stock ECU to see what happens, but without an AFM and 550cc injectors, I don't know how successful that will be. I don't mind mechanical problems...stuff that is obviously broken, but sh!t like this (right now) makes me not want to even mess with it...

Here's a remotely unlikely idea...take off the valve cover and check if the cam timing wheel on the cam is ok or if it is loose.

I'm not very smart on the NB fuel system, but possible the regulator failed and you have shit tons of fuel pressure at the rail?

That's another thing I need to figure out how to check. So, how does one check fuel press. on a NB?

until you figure that out, you can look for vacuum lines that might have come off?

Or an injector went static? I had these exact symptoms on an 06 WRX with SHITTY PE850 injectors (almost as shitty as your RC's)...swapped to non-shitty injectors = car was peachy

Scenario was 100% exactly the same.

or that. there's something going on in that you're dumping in too much fuel.