Gas in the face is bad, m'kay?

So, I took the car to the dyno again on Saturday. Wheezed out a stunning 109 horsepower and 200 lb-ft of torque. Gas mileage has also dropped like a rock. Fearing a fouled and clogged catalytic converter, I took the vehicle over to Bluegrass Muffler. The nice fellows there pulled the cat and called it good. They also put some heat shielding on my fuel lines and fixed a couple of leaks.

Fixing the exhaust leaks radically changed the AFR I was reading, and I started retuning the map.

Then, everything went wonky. Super-lean readings. Very strange. So, fearing some sort of malfunction that was dumping fuel into the cylinders and causing misfires, I ran to the store, got some oil, and changed it in the driveway. While waiting for the pan to drain, I noticed something dripping from the vacuum line going to the transmission.

It was gasoline. In the vacuum lines. Traced those back to the plenum, and then pulled the hose off the fuel pressure regulator, and got a healthy dose of gasoline sprayed on me. Diaphragm in the regulator has failed, car was getting a 60psi spray of fuel through the regulator's vacuum line right into the intake manifold. It's a miracle I haven't washed the rings out. I'm guessing the thing had been leaking a little for awhile, causing an over-rich condition. The exhaust leaks were letting O2 into the exhaust stream and causing further wonky AFR readings, which led the car running like crap.

Oil's changed, and I got a new diaphragm at AutoZone this morning. Hopefully I can get it back on the road this afternoon.

If it isn't one thing, it's another...

And the bottleneck moves down the line...

Well, I will declare the wideband a success. Drastically leaned out the map, car runs very well, part-throttle acceleration is very good, and it pulls very hard with the loud pedal down. As a matter of fact, I was finally confidant enough in the upper parts of the map to finally stomp the gas at a stoplight.

A small amount of wheelspin and I was off. Then just below 4000rpm, the transmission tried to shift into second, and was having big problems. Slipping. d'oh. I'm also getting a lot of noise in the tach signal, so I think I'll need to replace the wire with a shielded one and throw in a resister. That's a pretty easy job.

Hopefully I can start back up on the doors soon.

Oh, the wonder of it all!

And by all, I mean "neat eletronic toys."

I put a wideband oxygen sensor on the Bucket. It was a killer deal off an internet forum. An Innovate LM-1 wideband controller and sensor for $200. I scarfed it up immediately. That was two months ago. Last night, I had time and some nice weather, so on the car it went.

I had to make a cable to run the analog output from the wideband controller to the relay board, and getting the connector pushed through the grommet in the firewall was a pain, but it was a straightforward install.

I loaded up the Innovate software and remapped the analog output for 0-5v (10.0 - 20.o:1 AFR, linear), then set the stuff in MegaTune, and started the car.

Holy crap I've been running rich, no wonder the gas mileage has been lower than expected. It was idling below 10:1. Once I got the idle leaned out, I ran to Kroger to get the wife some sorbet, and ran MegaLogViewer's VE analysis against the log when I got home. Since it was a pretty short trip through the neighborhood, it didn't touch a lot of the map, but what it did touch has been leaned out dramatically.

I have band rehearsal tonight, so I'll be able to get about 30 miles of highway driving on it getting to and from Indiana. We'll see what happens to the map after that.