As you can see I haven’t been posting much.  Ever since the M hit the road a couple of weeks ago, my mind has been on an endless “get ‘er done” mode.   First, she drives good.  Not great, just good.  The suspension is tight and the steering is slopfree.  The tires are great too.  The tacho is possessed.  No noises from the tranny, clutch, or driveline; which is good because it was all out! What needs real attention now is the engine.  It starts fine, but idles high after warming up.  On the road it just doesn’t have that punch in the higher revs.

Last Saturday I took her to get a smog check-surprise, surprise it won’t pass.  Not even close.  Good thing I asked for a pre-test!  Back to the drawing board.  The tech said the engine is running excessively rich-at least not excessively lean!  So, what’ll make the engine run rich?   Easy list first:

• Fuel pressure regulator — Changed.
• Faulty injectors—rebuilt
• Oxygen Sensor—new (amendment to this below)
• Vacuum leak—checked out ok
• Air flow meter— slide mechanism checked for resistance linearity, ok.  Air temp sensor not checked.
• Water temperature sensor (blue plug)—new
• Wires? —new
• Weak coil—tested ok
• Damaged ECU—not tested
• Bad plugs—sooty and fouled plugs cleaned; new ones ready

Yesterday I removed the oxygen sensor to find a nice layer of sooty buildup indicative of rich combusion.  I cleaned it with brake cleaner and gave it a good wire brush scrub.  Put it back in and seemed like it started smoother.  I didn’t get the chance the drive the car, but maybe that was it?  If not, I have a feeling, or by deduction above, the culprit is the afm or the ecu.  I’ll report back.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at 9:01 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.