JBsZ06

Stupid mistakes that make your car run like crap thread.



I thought I'd embarass myself and offer up a thread about dumb mistakes I've made in the past that ruined the drivability of my car...

Issues that seem horribly involved yet can be resolved simply..

Here goes my latest and greatest stupid things I've done that destroyed my cars drivability:

Over tighten the air bridge to the throttle body..

Looked fine under the hood...Looked fine with just pulling off the air bridge from throttle body to inspect..

Low and behold sunday Night I pulled it off the car to replace with the stock air bridge and as I pulled the connector off I noticed the air bridge was bent towards the back of the connector..

I was thinking bad valves? Bad tune? Bad rings? bad valve guides? Bad piston? Manifold leak? I can't tell you how long I searched for the answer.....and...

ALL I did was rebend it back to shape and make SURE I didn't overtighten..

Now the car runs awesome..

So this week its been to replace the pcv valve....with the new one from GM and then....make sure I didn't over tighten the air bridge when installing..

Just a heads up if someone else is experiencing terrible part throttle drivability thinking it might be the tune...or something worse..

Sometimes the answer is in the simple things...that are easy to fix...

Anybody else have a dumb thing they've done to their car and want to share with the rest of us?

Hope this thread helps anyone doing a search for some horrific drivability problems.....

Engine was ripping itself apart because unmetered air was getting into the engine and it was running really rich to over compensate for the lean condition with unmetered air... (UNBELIEVABLE headache resolved! so it might be worth pulling the air bridge off and inspecting because you couldn't see the air leak from just taking the end of the air bridge off the throttle body) couldn't figure out why it wouldn't hold a tune. Now I know...Anyways..

yes I feel really stupid but if it could help a brother out..I'm willing to type this nonsense here to share this experience with others...

The cars running awesome! Now the cars worth every minute of aggravation I had.! Simple fix!

ShevrolayZ28

iTrader: (4)

It's always great to find a simple fix.

After I did my H/C install my car intermittantly ran like ****, then once in a while it would run great. As it turns out, I forgot to tighten the grounds on the back of the DS head.

Viper

iTrader: (6)

Fired up a new shortblock, heads and cam. Ran it for 15 minutes all was well. Then we noticed coolant pouring out underneath the car.

We forgot the freeze plug on the passenger side head ( in the back by #8 ). Doh!

Second big simple mistake was I put a plastic spacer at the end of the cable running to the pedal to take up slack. Didn't realize it limited WOT on the TB until I took the cover off the cruise control and manually turned it and saw it wasn't opening all the way. Quick fix but did a dyno pull that way first and wondered why it was low on power.

ShevrolayZ28

iTrader: (4)

Hah I did the same thing but I caught it before I filled with coolant. Those suckers are hard to reach once everything is assembled. Man did I hack up my forearms.

EDIT: oops. on mine it was the crossover block offs, not the freeze plug. You musta had to disassemble.

Viper

iTrader: (6)

We were 16 hours into the install and it was 12:45am when it happened, we were 'gettin er done' no matter what that night!! We just had to undo the spark plug wires, the one dood in the pics on my website has really thin arms and he was able to hand thread it and get an allen wrench on it.

bczee

iTrader: (12)

Ok.. I'll join the club...

After adding a Oil Pressure sensor on the plate above the oil filter, I missed one bolt hole (1/2 on only) on the o-ring gasket on the block off plate. I reached in the window, started the car up and noticed that I was standing in sea of oil Mobil 1! Easy find and easy fix, but took hours to get the Syn oil off of the floor. About 3 1/2 qt came out before I turned the engine off, only took about 2-3 seconds.

Thanks for the fun guys... and if anyone repeats what I have told you.. I will deny it I did any such stupid thing!.. LOL

TheBlurLS1

iTrader: (8)

I had my oil pan stuffed with rags changing the oil pump, didn't want the pickup tube bolt to fall in. 2 seconds after I got the bolt back in, I took the paper towels out. 2 seconds after that I dropped a camshaft retainer plate bolt and it fell in, right where the paper towels were.

Luckily I was able to fish it out with a magnet, took 2 days though lol.

bene

iTrader: (16)

Fubar'd my MAF ends trying to port it... DOH!

csmonte

hey bene, where did you mess up your MAF ends. I was thinking of porting mine soon, I've read up and was thinking of giving it a try.

where do I need to stay away from on the MAF ?

thanks

B.W.

iTrader: (3)

Bent a bracket for a Vacuum line installing the LS6 intake, took me an hour to figure out why my car was idling at 2500rpms. Lol

black01_WS6

iTrader: (13)

forgot to wrap the new lines of my o2 sensor, and when it rained the car ran like ****. Took till the next oil change to figure that one out.

Red99TA

iTrader: (11)

I think mine qualifies for the dumbest thing someone has done to a car:
Senior in high school back when I didn't know crap about cars and I had a '94 Ford Probe GT which is a 2.5L DOHC V6. Well the valve cover gaskets leaked a little bit so oil would collect around the spark plugs at the bottom of the spark plug "wells". So one day I try to soak up the oil with paper towels as best as I could then decide it would be a good idea to get the water hose and spray high pressure water down in there to clean the oil out. Now the spark plugs were all in but surprise surprise it wouldn't start after that I let it dry out 2 days using heat lamps and open air and it finally ran again....can't believe how dumb I was back then!!!

TheBlurLS1

iTrader: (8)

You need to stay away from the whole thing.

You can knock the screen out if you want, but don't port the MAF. You'll have more air flowing by than the MAF is seeing, you wouldn't hang your O2 sensors partly out in the open air would you? Same thing.

SS1875

iTrader: (34)

When I replaced my headers and intake the last time...I fired the car up to heat cycle the headers...car was spewing/belching black smoke and shaking all over the place.....forgot to plug in the passenger side injectors

8a8mfh

iTrader: (3)

Well this didn't make my car run like crap but....about a month or two after changing the sparkplugs my a/c stopped working. Looked around and found out I bent the passenger side A.I.R. tube out of the way far enough to rub on the liquid line for the a/c. Rubbed a hole in it.

TheSecretFormula

iTrader: (2)

The other day when I installed my headers I left the plug near the EGR that goes to the injector unplugged. The car started up and ran but wouldn't restart.

bene

iTrader: (16)

You can cut the "dividers" off a.k.a porting but don't mess w/ the sensors. Just take the whole MAF apart, leave the plastic piece alone and do the work on the aluminum pieces.

I messed up my ends by well using the wrong tools for it. I used a high speed dremel w/ a wrong bit. It cut the dividers like butter but it soo fast it recocheted everywhere. I sliced the housing everywhere. Z28 is still running fine but I'm going to buy plastic MAF ends that is already ported. Doing this mod, I'd suggest have it it tune to optimize the mod from more incoming air or else your A/F is off.

a-low

iTrader: (26)

Was doing an oil change on my 62 v-dub and when I was adding the oil I kept hearing a leaking sound. After the 3rd quart I noticed a pool of oil by my feet. Forgot to install the plate where the screen goes.

sobaka79

iTrader: (1)

after a transmission and stall upgrade, i kept hearing this weird grinding, rattle. I was 100% sure my 3 grand set up was toast...

it was pocket change in the passenger door...

LSGUNSS

iTrader: (41)

I did the same thing!!