superman22x

Haha, I'm working at GM this summer, I probably won't have the motivation to work on my own projects after work, lol. I'm a Ford guy at heart(I own a Ranger and a 93 Mustang), work for GM, and am currently driving my dads Subaru, lol. The only foreign car I drive gives me tons of problems... haha.

I'm thinking of picking up seafoam next time I am in town and running that through just for ************s and giggles... I didn't want to half to give up on this, so I'm glad it's pretty much solved. Being a mechanical engineer and then having to take your own car to a shop... Doesn't work like that. lol

Sprayed MAF cleaner and got 25mpg. Also put the old wires in but it didn't change when I did that much. Here's my theory. Got misfires when first running only when it was VERY humid out. So changed plugs and wires. Putting in the bosch plugs and it ran terrible. This caused the knock sensor to malfunction and pull timing. Put in NGK plugs. A bit better, but not 100%. Changed knock sensor, and it's quite a bit better but still running rich. At some point the MAF got dirty or maybe my dad or I even touched it.

haha, you are a bit more optimistic than me...

Nothing on the codes. Tomorrow I'm going to get some MAF cleaner and see what it does as well as change the wires back to the stock ones.

If the MAF was failing, should it throw a code? I unplugged the MAF and tried starting it. I didn't take it out of park, but it idled exactly the same.

Yeah, I was thinking about getting that done. But it shouldn't be causing the car to run rich at idle, so I think that can be ruled out. What would cause it to run rich at idle though? The high engine load at idle with belt squeal makes me think one of the accessories might have a bad pulley? Combine that with bad wires and the engine is pumping in more fuel to make up for the high load, but all the fuel isn't being burned causing a rich smelling gas.

Well, plugged the reader in and no codes came up. Timing was between 10 and 12. Oxygen sensor was at 2.8 I think for front bank sensor 1. The interesting reading was that the engine was at 48% load when it first started, about 5 minutes later, still at 33%. No codes for O2 or Cats, but it didn't get a chance to go through a full cycle. If there was a larger problem, it should have thrown a code right away according to my friend. He wasn't able to pull the old code though since I reset the ECU when I installed the knock sensor... derp. Oh, and based on the exhaust smell, she's running very rich.

Yeah, I understand that now. I'm fairly certain it's just the accessories belt slipping. Would get some messed up vavles if the timing belt was slipping.

I never threw the old wires away. I get out of class at noon tomorrow, so I think I will try putting them back on and take it for a 20 mile spin, see how she does. The CEL was before we did anything. Although, it would occasionally misfire on really humid days, but stopped once it was warmed up. Been doing that for a long time though, and only a few times a year. Yeah, the timing belt will be addressed soon enough...

They defenitally gave us some problems. We had the Bosch twin tip ones in that didn't require gapping. Weird plug. We replaced them with NGK and that made a night and day difference. Still wasn't quite right. I'm going to see if I can get the code pulled tonight.

Yep, I torqued them down fairly well. How hard is it to do an O2 sensor change? I am away at school and it's cold out, and I don't have a garage or even a paved parking spot. I park on top of about 8" of packed snow... Another theory I have is the after market plug wires maybe? They aren't NGK, so think that could cause this problem?

My car has been giving me some issues. It threw a CEL, then it cleared itself on the next tank of gas, and I never had a chance to get it read. Then the car lost a ton of power after putting in some bosch plugs. We replaced the Bosch plugs with NGK, gapped them properly, and put new wires in. Still was missing a ton of power. I replaced the knock sensor, pulled the ground off to reset the ECU and took it for a 20-30 minute drive, got it up to 70mph easily and it seemed to be running good again. Been going on short trips here and there to the ski hill and around town and lately the mileage is pretty bad. It's got most of the power back, but not quite all of it. And it's getting 15mpg. I was expecting at least 20mpg since the roads are always snowy here(3rd snowiest city in the country, AWD ftw!), it usually gets around 27 though. So not sure where to turn next. Don't know of any subaru dealers around here either and there is no CEL. There is a belt squeal when the car starts and sometimes it even starts a little hard, could be because it has been around 5* the last few days, but still, that's not too bad... I have been told it's possible it's because it's stuck in open loop mode? My friend is going to bring his code reader over in a few days and we are going to check for that, and see if we can find out what the last CEL was. One more thing, it's the non-turbo model, 107k miles on it, almost all highway.