DaveT

I never tested them. I've lapped some, some just looked at and or wire wheeled the crud off. If the contact surfaces look good, I've left them alone. Not had a problem I'm aware of. I'll note, that I had no reason to be suspicious that the valves had a problem on the engines I've had apart.

The lower part of the engine is the same. The SPFI manifold bolts right on. The EGR port might be different just take a look to be sure. The best way to get the bolts loose without snapping them is to run the engine to normal operating temperature, shut down and loosen them imediatly. Use only OEM intake gaskets. Antisieze on the bolts but be careful not to over tourque them.

Sounds like the battery is good. If the alternator not charging sufficiently is causing problems, it would show up as slowly lowering resting voltage. It also may show up as lower than 13.8v on the battery terminals while the engine is running. Check with everything electric off, around 1000rpm.

Unhooked the line and capped the brake booster port on the intake manifold. Discovered I need a fuel pressure gauge that reads higher than the one I have. Guess I haven't had a reason to test fuel pressure since my carbed 86.... Carb cleaner had no effect spraying around intake gaskets. Idle still jumping around 700 +/- 40rpm. Don't know how smooth to expect this to be. Things to do tomorrow - Fuel pressure, MAF cleaner.

You are correct, the purge valve code has no drivability effect .

Here is the back of a fuse block. EA82 Not sure what year. Most should be the same. If you can find a FSM - either in paper or online download, and can identify the wires you are missing / burned / broken I [and likely others] can more easily identify them. I have a 90 FSM. A few things are different - My 92 and 93 have those annoying motorized lap belts. My 90 and older had regular ones. So far, the 90 manual has been good for the 92 and 93.

Today: Ordered a leakdown tester. EGR valve functions with test vacuum, not leaking. Moves. inspected the seat, looks like any other I've seen. Fired the idle air control valve with 12V. Moves the same as another spare one. More tomorrow...

Oil leaks have no connection to head gasket failure in my experience. Some engine models have a time and or milage clock as it were. Most, if not all, will not tolerate running above normal temperature whole low on coolant. This is death for headgaskets. Milder, longer time to fail, more severely, shorter time to fail. But in my experience, fail will come after that condition. There is an oil gally that passes through the heads, and it can get to leaking. That's always been a slow to develop thing, from what ive seen, and when it gets to be enough to be annoying, reseal the engine.

Wagon? I can try to get pictures of an undamaged one.

What year is the car? What model?

Yes, I figure the cat would reduce them. But the idle isn't smooth, so I'm thinking something isn't quite right. When I swapped the known good exhaust = cats in, the O2 sensor came with them, so that's now been removed as an unknown. The engine twitches a bit with the uneven idle. It's not rhythmic, it's randomly uneven. I'll have to think overnight.... I could swap out the entire throttle body, or just the injector. It seems to be running great otherwise. I will also look at my other EA82 to see how it is idling tomorrow when I got to work. I don't want to drive this one much until I get it running right, so I don't kill a good set of cats.

Ok, I'll check those too. Didn't think of the booster, or the EGR. That one's a lot bigger pain to block! The RPM jumps is more like uneven, the needle will touch 700 once in a while, mostly at 800. Vacuum wiggling isn't much, just a division or so on the gauge. The PCV had strong vacuum on the side going to the manifold, near zero p or v on the side to the valve covers. I pulled the line at the T. The idle temporarily reacted to the change while the line was open, but went back to what it's doing when I blocked the lines. The purge line? is it one of the 3 on the canister? I pulled and blocked both sides of all of those one at a time.

More things... pulled each of the vacuum lines from the evaporate system 1 at a time, blocked them, no change. Pulled the vacuum line to the PCV valve, blocked, no change after settling out for the mix change. Pulled the hose off the iac valve, sprayed carb cleaner into it. Obviously all sorts of effects while doing, but no change after reconnecting. This engine is consuming far less oil than others I've run and passed, so that seems puzzling to me that it could be blowby.

The CTS reads 430 ohms at the ecu connector, actually lower than an old reference reading I have for 190F.

Idle 800rpm. But erratic, bobbing to 700 ocasionally. Sprayed vacuum hoses, intake boot with carb cleaner, no effect. Vacuum gauge on manifold port around 18" Hg. Needle wiggls a little with the unsteady rpm, but not rythmic. The variat ions are random. LED on ecu does not blink. Not in closed loop?

CT is every other year, until 25 year old car.

There are about 3 screws that hold the fuse box in place. Remove them, and you can get some different angles /access. There are a lot of wires so it will be stiff to move.

Use a photo editor to crop and / or re size them smaller.

Something is confused about the battery. No car battery is 700 volts. Resting voltage should measure 12.6V fully charged good condition battery. 12.0V fully discharged. Timing belts have nothing to do with the alternator. They are under the black plastic covers on the front of the engine.

Didn't put the tach on it yet. Wanted to get all the work / checks done before getting it all hot. Just going by my long history with these, the idle hasn't been abnormally high consistently. I was specifically paying attention to it after the test, and it would sometimes be pretty low, to normal. Although, the difference between the limit & fail reading might be hard to tell "By ear" without an A/B reference. Tuesday / Wednesday, I'll be taking it out for a drive, and stop to check Idle RPM when it's hot. If it reads good, and no other noticeable weirdness, ill take it back for the retest, right then.

PCV valve was a bit dirty, but the moving part wasn't stuck. Found another one, cleaned & checked it and put it in. The contacts inside the disty cap had grey crusty stuff built up on them, scraped that off. Center button normal. End of the rotor had black crud. Found a rotor in better shape, cleaned & installed it. Drew vacuum on the Modulator, with clear line, so I could watch for oil. Got some residual that was sitting in it, but not able to draw a continuous supply, or detect leakage. It was odd looking, not the same red as the ATF, not the same darkness of the engine oil. Going to put the known good exhaust system on it now. Only other sort of known unknown is that I'm running a 180 degree thermostat, instead of the normal 190 degree. Would that make enough difference for the ECU to not go into closed loop mode? How do I tell?

The AC compressor is disabled, as I have not had time to work on it. <--- strike that, that's the other car. But it was not used by me, wasn't on when I got back into the car after the test. It wasn't a hot day. I'd hope that the testing guys would know not to try to run the AC during a test. This place has been good in the past. Can't say about the other possible test operator errors, while there is a video feed, you really can't tell what is happening exactly. I just found some oil in the vacuum line at the 3AT vacuum modulator, so I will be testing that to see if it's leaking. I I'll look at / check the other ideas also. Plus the PCV valve.

So far- Going by tests in the FSM: CTS looks ok. Airflow meter test ok TPS looks ok Checked the spark plug wires, all look / measure normal. Checked the plugs. Light brown coating on all 4. Gap on the passenger side 2 about .039" Gap on the driver side about ..060" corrected to match the other 2. Tested the cat on the identical custom system my other car. it isn't firing either. I have the OEM exhaust &O2 sensor that passed on the car when I got it, so that will go on for the re test. Idle speed seems normal for what I see every day, not sure why it would have been high for the test. Since the new test that failed was the idle test, I wonder - the cat is dead, but it passes the cruising test anyway. Would idle inherently make more hydrocarbons, and thus fail since the cat is not removing them?

You may need to swap the diff. Have to look up final drive ratios in both service manuals. Or swap it, and see what happens. If it's not matched it will be obvious. Don't run in 4wd if it's not matched.

the trick to keeping the covers was to get them before they were rusted. Reassemble with anti seize, and they come off easy.