pudges951

Ok, so I searched and couldn't come up with anything that made sense. I am in the process of tracking down some boost leaks and some other issues that are making my car run rich. A couple of the leaks I found so far, the ISV was leaking so I siliconed that and believe I have that leaked sealed up, the second leak was on the turbine housing of my lindsey sport turbo, the one mounting hole that isn't used on our cars had an allen head plug in it and the air was pouring out around that so I siliconed that as well to seal it up. I pressure tested the car after I fixed those two leaks and could not hear boost leaking from anywhere and it took the air pressure awhile to bleed back down, yet the car is still running rich.

Two issues I still believe are happening(I'd like to get your guys inputs on these) It sounds like my forge DV is bleeding the air off too soon, i check it for leaks and it was sealed, I also check the spring operation per forge's website and it also passed that test. My thoughts on this are that the spring is weak and allowing the plunger to open before it should, so this would cause the car to become rich wouldn't it??

Second issue, right now the car is idling about 10.7-10.8 with all lights off, but if I turn the fogs on my wideband pegs at 10.0 and stays there as I drive as well. Any thoughts on this?? I'm getting a little frustrated to say the least especially since the previous owner said the turbo only had about 10K miles on it, I couldn't believe that was leaking.

Any help is greatly appreciated..
Thanks....

Renn 951

You have an issue with grounds. Experiment with other electrical loads as well - headlights, A/C, etc. and see if they also affect the AFR. That might help you isolate where in the circuitry the problem is.

MAF systems can act erratically when grounding problems exist

alxdgr8

Where is the ground to your wideband going? You can get funny readings if you don't have a good ground. Sometimes its best to ground right to the engine, not in the cabin.

fbgh2o

+1 - cleaning the grounds (all of them) and grounding the wideband to the engine worked for me.

pudges951

I have the wideband grounded in the cabin, but there is def something going on with the maf too because the car does stumble slightly, I will move the ground on the wideband and check the MAF ground as well.

pudges951

No A/c so should not be a problem there, when the headlights were turned on it did not seem to affect it at all so it could be a grounding issue with my fog light wiring.

Adonay

You can check how the Maf should behave by grounding it directly to the negative on the battery.

fast951

A high probability you are experiencing the "classic" ground issue. As suggested already, for testing, disconnect the MAF ground wire (Black) from chassis/engine ground and go directly to battery. Notice any difference?

Is this something that started all of the sudden, or has been increasing gradually?

pudges951

Hey John, thanks for some input, I didn't want to bother you with another mass of emails, although I know you would have responded instantly. Well, the car was runing great after I installed your MAF, the car would try to break loose in the first three gears, then the turbo started getting louder and the car progressively got slower so I figured boost leak. We then put a smoke machine on the car and the only two places smoke was coming from was the throttle body shaft and somewhere below the turbine housing on the turbo, so I rebuilt the throttle body and as said above sealed up the allen head that was leaking in the turbo. The whole voltage thing however just started about 2 weeks ago, that part of the equation was not gradual, it was just there one day.

I'm going to move the grounds today and see if that makes a difference.

pudges951

Ok, some more troubleshooting done. I grounded the MAF directly to the battery and the idle AFR's improved greatly. She is idling around 11.5-11.8 when warmed up, car has never idled there since I have owned it so that's great. Partial throttle is about the same mid 11's or so. But as soon as I go full throttle she goes pig rich and pegs my wideband at 10.0, there is no smoke now, so she definitely is not as rich as before but still is going rich. I'm thinking that the bov spring is probably the culprit here, I just got done ordering the spring kit from forge so I can put a stiffer spring in it.

lart951

I had exactly the same issue, the fix was 3 new universal ground cables from autozone, two directly to the engine and other to the chassis. The problem stopped immediately.

pudges951

What did you ground with the 3 cables? The MAF?

lart951

is the whole system that is not getting a good ground, grounding the maf wont fix your issues, let me see if I have a picture of my engine bay with the grounds. I had the power perfect and and a wb, but I took the car to a dyno to verify the accuracy of my wb and surprise as soon as I turned the lights the car went rich so my wb was accurate.

ehall

When I first saw this, I tought, lol WTF? Now I'm glad that I read it.

Adonay

I dont want to show all the Extra grounding wires i have made in my car to make it work like it should Your problem sounds like the one i had before . How is your O2 sensor ?