Ok this is probably gonna be a long post but stick with me. I like to give a lot of background.
Got my madz28 email tune in the car and something still didn't seem right. Hooked my friends laptop up to the car and scanned a short drive with datamaster. Knock count was at like 32000...a lot. I figure it out, when I went to OBD1 i didn't switch the knock sensor over....duh! So I get a new one for a 94 and after covering myself with coolant I get it in the car and go for a drive, knock count is down, it runs good, everything is happy, yay. So I drive it around for a few weeks, no problem. So, last week I decide it may be a good idea to put new plugs in since driving around for a month or 2 with no tune running exremely rich probably didn't do them any good. So me,a friend and out dad's spend a couple hours on it and eventually get 5 in (even with LT's it's a pain). We go down to sears and when I leave the car starts missing skipping stuttering acting like it doesn't want to shift nearly dying etc etc. wtf. All plug wires are on (and yes they are in the right place since we only did one plug at a time) so I'm thinking "so I put 5 new plugs in, car runs like crud????" Friend comes over with his laptop and by this time it's raining and any hope of going and getting some better times at the track are out the window completely. We scan with datamaster and guess what...knock count is way up and we have a code for the knock sensor. I check, it's pluged in right, visible wire seems fine (note: seems). Next day I get another new sensor and put it in thinking maybe I just got a bad part, so at this point everything is hunky dory again. However, the sensor i took out (only a few weeks old) looks like the original sensor 100k mile sensor did...is it supposed to be like this ? So here I am exactly one week later on my way to sonic, I leave a light and oh boy...it starts sputtering and missing again. Not as bad as last week but it still shouldn't be there. It wasn't bad all night just that one point and a little bit of missing later down the road. I'm thinking maybe my week old knock sensor is going bad again. IF so, what could possibly cause this????
Now, I do have a small oil leak (I think it's oil) on the front of the engine from god knows where, it has new gaskets. Also I do need to tighted my header bolts so i'm sure there is a small leak. Is there any way one of these things would be connected to either the knock sensor going bad or if it's not the sensor itself, cause the car to run like it is and maybe make the computer think it is the knock sensor?
ok that is that problem. Sorry not done yet
Now to my other little gremlin...vacuum check valves...that little piece of plastic up by the PCM with 3 rubber hoses connected. This goes back to before I modded the car. I've probably gone through 6 or 7 , maybe more of these little buggers in the past year. I though I had fixed whatever problem it was since this one lasted me from early april until saturday. They just break. They crack or one of the connections breaks off. My best guess is that something is pulling on one of the hoses and causing it to crack from stress but the hoses are not tight at all. Maybe it is getting a sudden burst of air strong enough to bust it? I don't know.
So here I am at 2 am typing this up because I am completely baffled. Plug wires are connected and not burnt, new opti, reset the PCM with the installation of each new sensor...I just don't get it. I just want my car to run right again and I'm at the point where I'm not going to be doing anything to the engine that isn't totally necessary for a long time.
Any of you that read that whole post and can help me, if I ever meet you, I owe you.