Alex Sol

also could be the reason for the hunting idle. vacuum leak quite possible.

dutchcrunch

I still think your AFM is toast, it, is acting erratic, causing you power issues. Can you drive it in a smooth action to a given speed and it drives normal..? If I had a good afm I’d let you borrow it, I don’t. As you accelerate if the afm get caught in a flat spot for a second that could cause your backfire . Man those places that rebuild the afm just open them up and clean the track and slap back together, the ain’t rebuilding anything .......... it just seems this is a good probability that this is where you should look.

Alex Sol

dutch , thanks for your generosity and offering your 'broken' afm.. haha. I appreciate that and it looks like i have more than one issue.

When i check for the resonance flap click on start up, i can hear and feel it popping. Though it feels like it is not connected to anything so the ball joint seems to be attached to nothing and i can't feel my way around it. Will send in a camera or scope or even just a mirror. Then check back in the forum.

Also... i had replaced a ignition lead with a msd wire in the summer and found arcing so fixed, tested and thought i had it figured out... only to find last night using a set of jumper cables (one pinching the ground strap near the driver's side rear trunk hinge) and another pinching a long handled screwdriver... I got zapped earlier in the day so knew to look around the ignition coil / cap area... and found a major arc off the ignition wire about 2 inches from the top of the distributor cap, that was jumping onto my screw driver and must've caused all kinds of havoc... I removed the wire, disconnected the six prong harness going to the ignition control unit and went for drive... not quite right but running on just secondary (is there a correct way to connect the ignition leads?) left side coil (rear of car) to primary? right side coil (front of car) to secondary?

i cut off the factory end with the arcing, recrimped the end and installed, tested and bam.. no more hesitation at the 2k range and building rpm all the way to redline with no stutter or dead spots.. but still getting some afm door slap... soo will take dutch's advice and swap in good known afm as a test (which i have a spare)...

Alex Sol

so i unplugged the vacuum line that goes to the resonance flap and found little or no difference in the running of the engine under full throttle or close to full throttle until about 5,500 rpms where it feels a bit flat and labours to get to redline... thinking i like to try two things:

1. measure vacuum and check for leaks going to the resonance flap which btw way goes into a square hole ?!?
2. open the resonance flap wide open and drive around with it this way and see how it goes? less mid range tq? stalling / stuttering?

appreciate all the comments and advice!