Finally Boosting Like It Was Intended, 9 months after my swap Options

[jgreening]

Last night we were finally able to find two problems in my boost / vacuum system that had been preventing me from boosting properly all the time (the problems were intermittent). The first problem was that I had a chewed O-ring on one of the injectors which was letting a small amount of air out. We replaced the O-ring and the leaking stopped when we pressured the positive boost system. However, that did not cure my huge vaccuum deficiency. We were wildly speculating about the cause of the problem which included possible defects in the head (read: $$$) or other issues. We did a compression test which turned out good. But, the shop did not have a leak down tester. We were just about ready to give up for the night when my mechanic said he wanted to switch my boost guage out with a mechanical unit. I was tired and ready to go home and I told him that it wasn't the guage because the car boosted properly on an intermittent basis and when it worked, the boost guage worked. I told him that if the guage was bad, there would not be a corresponding increase in horsepower when the guage decided to work correctly. I actually offered to bet him $5.

He took the guage out of another car and hooked it up to my vacuum hose connected to the BOV. When the car was started, it showed a vacuum of 20 h/g!!!!!!! My electronic guage was showing a h/g of 6! Sure enough, it was the guage that was defective. Do you believe it? Another problem solved by identifying a defective Autometer guage. Thats number 2 for me.

The reason that there was a corresponding increase in horsepower is because when the guage was reading incorrectly, the boost was alot lower. I have really been driving around on about 7psi for the last seven months. The car is sooooo different at even 10 or 12 psi.