BoostedBalls

If you have a miss- when it's dark outside open the hood with the engine running and see if there is a light show from the plug wires.

If there is pinging, I would check your timing belts. I leave the covers off so I can see at a glance if there is anything out of the ordinary, ie: oily belt, bad tensioner, bad idlers, etc. The knock sensor is probably not the issue because if your sensor was bad, you would likely have a CEL and the timing would be way retarded and you would lack power. You don't want to drive without it on the EJ series engines because timing will be retarded and gas milage would be crap. The EA series engines don't seem to care. I ran the snot out of mine at 20psi many times with no damage to the engine. The knock sensor MUST have a good ground on the EJ. If your block is too greasy to get a good ground- run a wire between the bolt and the sensor and ground it under the throttle linkage with another ring terminal. (5/16") If your engine has a lot of miles on it, you could use some water injection. If it's naturally aspirated, you could simply hook a windshield washer pump to a single nitrous nozzle with .040" jet right upstream of the throttlebody. Downstream of the TB is stupid because you will be sucking the bottle dry at idle. Water/meth injection will clean your carbon like nothing else. It's easy enough to install a fitting in the side of your windshield washer tank and run a beefy inline pump right to the nitrous nozzle. Activate with momentary switch or throttle switch. The windshield washer fluid is water and methanol mix. The colder the mix ,say -30F and below, is the good stuff. This will cool your intake temps and clean your engine at the same time. It will also let the timing advance farther before you reach detonation, which = more power and fuel economy. stay away from the fluid that has all kinds of bug and tar remover in it. The cheap blue stuff is the best.

It shouldn't effect the knock sensor. Have you tried using seafoam in the oil to clear it up? Are you using a fram oil filter? (hope not) If your engine is over 150k you might try 10W40 oil.

It seems to be working great after messing around with the wiring. There must be a bad wire in there and I left it in a good spot or something. I have bunch of aicraft shielded wire so I might as well just replace it all the way back to the ecm.

I should have clarified. The car gets up to temp just fine in a matter of minutes. BUT- the surging continues until the engine, and maybe everything else under the hood, gets good and hot. This makes me think some kind of sensor or solenoid is not working well until it's really hot. On cold days, the engine would run like crap most of the time. On hot days, it runs like crap for an hour or so, then it runs much better. I'm going to try grounding the O2 sensor and the knock sensor directly to the block. Dang, I wish I could get vrg3's program to work for me!

I'm still dinkin around with this thing! Quick recap of the issue: When the engine is cold (running for less than an hour or so) I cannot get the car to accelerate smoothly. It whistles and makes a "shk shk shk" sound like a wastegate or bov is opening when it isn't supposed to. If I hold the throttle at 1/3 or so, it will sometimes bog and then out of nowhere it will make great power, and then bog, etc. When the engine has been driven for a long time, it runs very strong. But when I'm WOT at ove 80mph, it will surge. It really feels like my timing is all over the place. It did seem to get a little better when I replaced the knock sensor but it didn't fix the issue. I wonder if I just moved the wire harness around enough to make the ecm happy for a while. It only thros a "purge canister solenoid" CEL and I don't think that would have anything to do with this. I'll delete it soon with a 100ohm resistor anyway. So far I have replaced: PCV, plugs and wires, fuel filter, air filter, knock sensor, ecm coolant sensor, timing belt tensioner, belts, O2 sensor, wastegate solenoid, fuel pump, Troubleshooting steps: -Installed water/meth injection to see if I had actual detonation. -Installed 3" downpipe and deleted front cat. -Checked crankshaft for timing gear key damage. -Going to try grounding mod next... I know I'm missing some things here. I tried using vrg3's scantool, but I couldn't get it working on my old school laptop. Something wrong with the parrallel port I think.

Who refills nitrous bottles in Portland area?

I cleared all the codes and the car drove beautifully for 9 miles. I then checked the codes again and there are none stored! I got wood!

I think I remember seeing a drain plug on the botton of my 91SS, or it was on my wifes 97GT. I don't remember which...

you can put a stack of cardboard in the interior to soak up humidity to keep it from smelling funky in there.

Yeah, the O2, wastegate solenoid and knock sensor codes were likely from me messing with them. But I haven't touched the purge solenoid. The car does seem to run a bit rich; I can smell heavy exhaust, no smoke though. I'll clear all the codes and then try disconnecting the purge solenoid and see how it runs. Then maybe I'll try sucking some seafoam through the solenoid. After that, I'll try running a fresh ground to the ECU.

so I got: 13- TDC sensor 22- ? 24- Air control valve or circuit 32- O2 sensor 35- PURGE SOLENOID!!! 42- Idle switch 44-? WTF? something is FUBAR, maybe the purge solenoid? I think I'll esearch that now...

haha, OK they are clear now!

I found it! I got codes: 35, 44, 22, 32, 42, and maybe a 12,13, 14

Pull both together but make sure the car is jacked up quite a bit and drain the tranny fluid first and maybe plug the back of the tranny. When you do decide to separate the eng and trans, remove the torque converter / flexplate bolts so you can leave the torque converter inside the trans. Sometimes the torque converter won't go back into the trans. I had to replace a perfectly good torque converter because I pulled it out of the trans. The trans is more weather proof with the torque converter installed anyway.

I only see one black connector right near the green ones but it's only a single connector. There is a pair of black connectors above the driver's right knee but they are already plugged in.

sweet, thanks for that.

I tried to check my codes today in my 91 SS. I connected the green connectors under the dash on the left side then switched the key to run. All the warning lights came on and the cooling fan cycled on and off repeatedly. No flashing CEL and no flashing LED on ECM. (if there is one) Is there something I'm missing???

Hijacker here, I have the remote entry thing when I bought the car used but it didn't come with remotes. Now I have two remotes; how do I reprogram it so I can use the remotes? 1997 Leg GT

I installed a 3" downpipe and the problem is still there. I couldn't see clearly enough if the remaining cat was clogged or not though. I think I'm having issues with the knock sensor wiring. What's a good scan tool for this obd1?

well, the Walbro gss-342 fuel pump didn't fix the issue. I'm thinking that the BOV or timing is messing up.

I just replaced the wires with NGK ones and the problem still exists. I'm thinking Catalytic converter, fuel pump, or MAP. wanna add to the list or place a bet? I have a Walbro 255 and a new downpipe in the mail. We'll see soon enough...

I searched first and found nothing about upgrading the fuel regulator when upgrading to the Walbro 255. I would hate to hook up the Walbro 255 only to find out that my fuel pressure regulator can't dump the extra fuel fast enough. Have any of you Walbro users tested the fuel pressure at idle?

I have a stock turbo in my 91 legacy with auto trans. I'm upgrading the exhaust and probably the turbo as well. What turbo is on my car? Is the WRX unit a better selection? Are the up pipe and down pipe flanges the same? I plan on doing some drag and rally racing with this car. I was planning on switching over to Garrett but it would be easier to just stick with the Subaru stuff (if the flanges match up). any ideas?

-I would grab a head gasket and make sure the damage doesn't affect the metal ring seal. -Then I would compare it to the other head to make sure the machine shop didn't surface the head too deep. This will mess up your compression ratio and possibly the cam timing. Not to mention, make the head prone to warpage. If those checks are good, I would take a die grinder or dremel and lightly blend the chips around the edges of the combustion chamber and run it. I wouldn't be too worried about hot spots and knocking unless you are building this as a competition engine. I've done a lot heads that had foreign object damage much worse than this and were still able to win races. Of course a new head would be better but what about $$$???