Topic: Whole lot of engine codes, no CEL, and reduced boost... what's going on?

[elff]

My car is setup better for canyon carving and if I had a cage, the racetrack. 

The MAF will not help at all with the lack of boost, but will help with your AFR which indirectly could eliminate the misfires if that is what's causing them.
For the cheap cost of the can, and the 5 minutes of time it takes, it's well worth doing on a regular basis.

[Sol Asylum]

When you can build boost how much is it?

[elff]

Bad news... I still have limited boost.  Again, 1 or 2 psi in 1st / 2nd gear, up to 7 psi in 3rd, 0 in 4th/5th.  No codes.

[Sol Asylum]

Thanks Elff.

I think I would be checking to see how free the turbo spins.  If that wasn't a problem then I would want to see if I had a waste gate issue.

[rlhammon]

I've been out driving the car today in northern Michigan on a fall color tour.  I think I have an issue at the intercooler... but I don't have the proper means to really look at it here.  I'll have back home on Sunday and tear off the front bumper to look.  Hoping this is it.  *fingers crossed*

[elff]

The leak test I described would help with that. 
You would hear the hissing coming from the front bumper area.
Is yours a stock intercooler?  If so, they are prone to cracking.  We are now seeing more than just a handful that fail under higher pressures and your E47 tune probably pushed it past that limit.

[rlhammon]

How about the intercooler itself?  Any bulges,splits, etc.?

Found the issue, though I didn't get it fixed tonight.

So... this weekend while on a fall color tour, I stopped short of a dirt road that went down hill...figured I'd leave the car on the pavement.  On the walk back up the hill I could see that the intercooler had a lean to it.  The passenger side was lower than the driver side, and the black plastic below the IC was actually bowed down below the front facia.

The car scrapes the road all the time (I'm rather low to the ground, lower than Z0K specs) and that air damn rubs on ruts in the road... so I hadn't paid attention to any "unusual" scrapping, because it is "usual" to hear.  Anyway... I was scraping up that piece of plastic pretty good.

I got home tonight, put the front end up on ramps, and tore the facia and associated bits off the car to get to the intercooler.  Pretty obvious what happened, but not sure how it happened.  I have the street intercooler from Performance Autowerks (sorry if I'm not supposed to mention names, not sure if they are a sponsor here).  The bracket on the passenger side failed, the entire bracket broke off the intercooler.  The weight of the intercooler pulled it loose from the bottom of the hose with the spring on it.  I had hand checked all the clamps and couldn't feel anything loose, but couldn't see this with everything installed.

Picture I took walking up the hill when I found the issue:


Picture of broken hanger on passenger side as seen once front facia removed:



Picture of where IC pulled out of coupler:


Thankfully I have all my stock bits, so my plan is to put the stock IC back in for this week as I have my final season points race this Sunday.

[Gentleman Jack]

Oil in the IC too?

[elff]

Congrats on finding the issue. 

Ive gone back to the zok height because I was scraping everywhere and hit the IC hard once. I was scared i was going to have something similar to happen and the the fine city of Filthadelphia decided to rip mine off completely

[rlhammon]

Oil in the IC too?

You noticed that too.

I've got a DDMWorks Oil Catch Can, and the inside of the pipe seem clean as can be, so not sure what's going on there on the OD of that inlet.  I did notice the exhaust soot on my garage floor after getting the car up the ramps.  VERY black... so again, not sure what's going on.  When I bought the MAF cleaner (yes Dave, cleaned that Friday and thank you) I picked up some more Gumout cleaner.  I need to check my OCC this week and see what's going on there.

[Critterman]

Life with a forced induction engine is always full of mysteries.  Glad you have gotten to the root cause of yours.  Are you going to be able to get that brace fixed?

[rlhammon]

Life with a forced induction engine is always full of mysteries.  Glad you have gotten to the root cause of yours.  Are you going to be able to get that brace fixed?

I'll get it fixed, but I want to talk to Dave over at Performance AutoWerks first.  There's no reason the bracket can't be fixed and welded again... but that's not going to happen before I have to drive the car.  I'll toss the stock IC back in for now, and pull it back out over the winter.  The car is about to go to sleep for its winter nap anyway, and I usually have something to work on during that time, so this will be added to that list.

[LatinVenom]

Why are the black connecting rods not secure? When you took the fascia off is that why they are not connected?.

[rlhammon]

Why are the black connecting rods not secure? When you took the fascia off is that why they are not connected?.

Yes, I removed all the black plastic under the intercooler in order to get it out easier, and had to disconnect those rods.

[rlhammon]

Tonight I put the stock IC back in, tightened things back down and took it for a spin before putting the front of the car back together.  I now have boost, and no CEL's or pending CEL's.  Yeah!

Interesting note... this weekend I did a lot of driving, mainly highway, but some back roads as I was on a fall color tour.  I noticed that after replacing the Evap Solenoid (which was indeed bad) that my MPG went up... way up.  I had been only getting 27 MPG, and the trip (~900 miles, almost three tanks) averaged 31.3 MPG.  I'm not sure what that Evap Solenoid is really doing or how it works, but I was greatly surprised to see the increase.

I'll spend some time tomorrow putting the car back up on the ramps and getting it back together.  Took me about an hour to get it on the ramps and everything off the car the first night, and about 45 minutes tonight to swap the connectors, and reconnect up the IC.  It's a pain trying to hold up the IC, and fit the boots on to the pipes without a second person, but certainly can be done with a bit of patience.

**Edit**

Forgot to mention that Dave and Performance Autowerks has been great.  They are going to repair the bracket, weld it all back together, and ship it back to me for free.  Yeah.. we are a luck community to have really, really great vendors.  We all know Performance Autowerks isn't the only one like this, but we also need to remind them all how much we appreciate the way they take care of us.

[Gentleman Jack]

Nicely done.