I'm having an idle problem and heard the air pump could be the source of the problem. I was wondering how it could cause problems because I thought all it did was send air to the main cat?

 

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The air pump pumps air through the Air Control Valve (ACV). The air control valve then redirects the air to the cat, engine, atmosphere, or a combination. When the car is at idle, the ACV directs air into the cat and the engine. The fuel map is programmed to accomodate for air being pumped into the engine. When the air is not being pumped into the engine at idle, you will get a bad idle becuase it will be too rich. At 3700 rpms, the air pump is completely disengaged. Therefor it will not effect the air fuel ratio of the motor when the motor is being revved out.

 

.the stock ecu is programmed to work in conjunction with air pump.....disconnected mine due to failure and it causing jumpy idle not to noticable in my opinion if you have aftermarket ecu you can lean it out a little to correct idle jumpy idle is due car being too rich....one thing about bad air pump it will clog your cats if you still have them including high flo midpipe

 

i have a pfc... hmm... if it clogs my hiflow cat i'll just knock out the crap in it and then it'll be my midpipe free of extra charge is there a way to quick fix this problem w/o taking off the air pump or leaning it out? leaning it out scares me

 

thanks for the explanation btw and it does sound like it's choking on too much gas when it idles, but only after the car is warmed up, and if i leave it off for about 5-10 minutes the problems goes away for about 1 minute and then it starts having issues again

 

It's OK to lean the car out at idle. The worst thing that could happen is you might stall the car. You will see the idle change as you are taking out fuel. When the idle is nice and smooth you know you can stop taking out fuel. You will need to pull the fuel from the vacuum portion of your map in the 500 to 1000 rpm range.
Most high flow cats are designed to operate without an air pump. I don't think you will damage yours if you are not pumping air into it.

 

what do you mean by the vacuum portion of the map?

 

Where the hell did you get that information? High flow or not, a cat will still need the air pump to survive. Call up any tuner and ask.