Now we move to the top side to do some maintenance and some upgrades. I love the access allowed but wish the clam shell would just pop off. Being old make leaning into the engine compartment a slight drag, BUT my shoulders were tired from working over my head for the past few weeks too. One is never satisfied....
Off comes the throttle body for a cleaning and to mount the Pedro's torque tube thingy. The TB is quite filthy and gets a good cleaning.
With the TB out, the "T" needs to be removed. This involves some hose clamps and then some pushing and pulling and it pops right out.
Also, while disconnecting the tube from the AOS it crumbled and I'm sure was leaking false air into the system. I hate cheap $hit stuff like this. So many things are so well designed and executed on the engine/drive train but this piece of tube was pulled from a clothes dryer or something to save $0.02. It's a thin corrugated plastic that lives in a hot place and just got hard and very very crispy. It really did crumble into pieces when trying to disconnect it.
This happened while taking the clip type ends off of the "T' thing. I'm 100% certain that this was a vacuum leaker and by it's design and location, it is really hard to inspect. If you have some work done, get this replaced as preventive maintenance. As it was saturday and no dealer in sight and I didn't want to wait, I called Missus Better 7/8 ths who happened to be out doing some retail therapy. Before she took off, we had discussed what I was working on and she recalled just how tight the TB was to the other parts. What I needed was a 7/8" ID rubber hose to replace the shattered AOS pipe. I gave her a call to give her the dimensions (she was in the dressing room trying on a dress) and we chatted about being naked and the hose I needed. I sent her a text with a picture and size/length of hose needed. She returns home victorious but not with just 1 hose. The 7/8" ID hose was too stiff in her opinion to make the turn from TB to AOS so she got a short piece of that and then a smaller hose that was very flexi that would go inside of the larger hose to make the connection. I ended up having to use about 16" of the smaller flexi hose in a loop but it worked perfectly. The 7/8 hose just collapsed on itself when I tried to make the bend and would have just closed up and pinched off the vacuum. She's the best and I don't know what she sees in me. Puty I guess.......
A nice clean TB ready to go back in.
Time to clean the MAF, not only is it tucked away under the edge on the engine compartment but the same clown the designed the transmission drain bolt, did the MAF screws too. The screws are a security type of screw. Really???
Is there a run on MAF's being stolen out there?? Is it the mob or just kids yanking them out for fun?? This is a maintenance item and needs to be easy to be cleaned. The saved $0.02 on the AOS tube and then wasted here with these stupid screws...
Another design conundrum. One end of the air tube that carries the fresh are past the hard to steal MAF into my nicely cleaned TB is nearly impossible to slip onto the TB!! I had to use a huge pry driver to get it to pop on, BUT the other end?? Slips on like an old slipper with ZERO effort. WTF is up with this kind of execution?? I definitely put some $$ in the swear jar while performing this feat.
It was getting late, I was tired and wanted to crank it over and hear it run!!! Fighting with this friggin tube pushed my patience to the limit.
I filler her up with oil, checked and rechecked all connections, got my foot on the clutch and turned the key. Fire on 1/2 of a crank!! It settled into a nice high idle, showed oil pressure when the idiot light went out. I slipped out and looked underneath to make sure I wasn't pumping 9 Qts of oil onto the floor and let it run a bit. It settled into a nice slow idle and the new exhaust sounded GREAT!
It was very satisfying after so may different little projects were done. Some major some very minor, but all done to make a better car.