RaPtOr-T

I thought I would share this, I'm curious if anyone else has ever had this happen.

I did a vacuum hose job about 2 months ago, and have been trying to find a few minor complications with it ever since. About 4 weeks ago, I had all kinds of problems with hoses blowing off, so I went back and zip tied them. After that, I still had strange problems including no boost in 1st, and lame secondary response occasionally in other gears. I researched and found that this problem can only be caused by a couple of hoses, so I went and double checked these hoses and found nothing wrong.

I was sorta fed up with the car so I gave up for about a week, then I went back to it. I double checked those hoses again and still nothing wrong, but I was determined to find this leak so I ran the car and started looking around. I could hear a hiss but I could no locate it for my life. Finally after randomly throwing my hands around my finger hit something....hissing stopped idle dropped! Turns out there was a hose underneath a solenoid that I could not see, but it was not attached!

I was really excited and did some test runs. The car was finally really "quiet" again and boosting great 1st and 2nd, then, I hit 3rd gear and there was that HISSSSS again. Boost was great, but I knew there was some sort of leak somewhere.....I searched everywhere, but I could not reproduce this leak! For the past 2 weeks it has be spontaneously appearing under boost, yet it had no effect on boost pattern.

Tonight, it hit me like a ton of bricks in the face. After boosting I could always smell this oil/fuel like smell in the car, but it would be gone in about 5 seconds. I figured since my BOV was atmosphere vented and my secondary burns a little oil that it was probably the BOV, and did not think much of this. Another strange thing I noticed is that my car was only pulling 14mmhg instead of 16mmhg like it used to. This boost leak was so hard to find because I could hear it to the left of me in the passenger seat, yet there are not really any vacuum hoses over there which totally baffled me. If you have not caught on yet, I'll give you a hint, Autometer

The piece of crap gauge is somehow leaking air! It would read the typical 1psi with the key off, but it would also fly to 16psi under .7 boost on the PFC. I don't think I'm getting 16psi with the stock cat still on I capped the POS off and did a pull and everything was perfect, I still can't believe I didn't catch on earliar though! Anyone else had similar experiences?

Davin

iTrader: (14)

yeah, i had this one hose split and my water temp was bouncing like a rabbit. i popped the hood and one of my check valves broke HAHA. now i have my car in the garage completely taken apart as i do a 100,000 tune up :-)

katinkid

i had my map sensor hose crack, sounded like i was on one rotor, scary goin through a drive through like that.

MontegoRx

Sort of along the same lines, but the exact opposite....

When I had my 87 TII, I made a Home Depot Turbo Inlet, had my dad machine aluminum to fit the round K&N to the square Airflow Meter, and then clamped it all together so boost wouldn't blow it apart (should start giving you signs at this point).

I took the car for a test drive, and everything seemed pretty good. It seemed like it was warmed up (FC temp gauges aren't the most accurate either), so I gave it some boost. The car felt great, so I had to swing back home and take my brother out.

Round two... car hasn't been shut off. I get back onto the highway, nailed it, and the boost flies up REALLY quickly with the full exhaust and intake (Also have Fuel Cut disabled). Suddenly, car feels like it surged and felt like the engine just plain quit. I slowed down, my brother laughing his *** off, and tried again. Again, the damn thing boosts to about 5-6 psi, then falls on it's face.

After ALOT of thinking and checking it out in the garage in neutral, we couldn't find any leaks or anything wrong (It had blown the IC hose off a few times, but that was all nice and tight now). We ended up taking a wild guess that I used rubber hoses for the intake, between the compressor and atmosphere. At that point, your intake is under VACCUM when the compressor winds up. The heat from the engine, mixed with the vac was totally collapsing the intake.

I ended up replacing as much as I could with PVC (another Home Depot job), and only used the rubber for small couplers. The thing ran MUCH better like this, but still looked ghetto, so I did what anyone would've done. I bought some paint (home depot AGAIN) and just painted it all to look like dark'ish silver so it did't draw the ghetto attention.

fsae_alum

RaPtOr-T.....what vacuum lines did you use? Silicone or Viton? What brand also?

RaPtOr-T

Amazing how many things can go wrong

As for the line I'm actually not really sure what it is...It came with the boost gauge which I got after a week after having the car. It will bend, but if you try and kink it, it just breaks, I'm not so sure how to describe it? The line appears to be in good shape its the actual gauge that has busted as far as I can tell.

MontegoRx

Is it that small clear'ish plastic hose? If so.. you'd be better off putting the larger fitting on the gauge (mine came with a bunch of reducers) and then using standard vac line. The crush fitting on the brittle plastic line never seems to hold up.

fsae_alum

Sorry....I should have clarified myself. I was referring to the fact that you did a vacuum hose job a couple of weeks ago and the lines started blowing off. Whay type of vacuum lines were those ?

Regarding your Autometer gauge crapping out....having had both Autometer and a Defi Link gauges....I can say that what happened to you is unfortunately about what I'd expect from the lower level Autometer gauges. I have learned over and over again that you pretty much get what you pay for.