Oh nO-ring! A Corvette Adventure.

Since I had upgraded my amps I was cruising around adjusting the stereo. In the course of my drive I hit WOT a couple of time (i.e. freeway onramp- nothing crazy). Something seemed off, but I wasn’t sure what. I popped the hood for a quick look, but didn’t notice anything amiss. Later I took the car for a quick spin to see if it was feeling any better. It had a rough time starting- died three times, then idled like crap and drove about the same as the night before. As I was driving a hint of gas fumes was present but I chalked it up to an old car next to me. Still, when the fumes persisted I turned on my heater and was blasted with gas fumes. I took the car home, left the engine running and had a look:

Probably not something I should be driving around with! I pulled out the leaky injector and discovered there was a pretty big hunk of o-ring missing. I bought some OEM rings and made the repair. No leaks, so that was a good start. But the car was still having some issues.

injector-bad-o-ring-feb-2013

I felt like the issues must be related to the injector, but they seemed like symptoms of a boost/vacuum leak. The car wasn’t boosting past five pounds (it’s supposed to top out at six), it wasn’t starting well, it was idling rough and air/fuel ratio was much too lean when the car was fist starting. Here’s some video documentation:

Thinking maybe the o-rings that were used could be the issue (you can have an air leak through your injectors) I replaced them with OEM ring on the other seven injectors. Sadly, when I started the car there was little to no change. I inspected all the turbo piping, but wasn’t able to locate a leak. There’s not much more I can think of to do so I took the car back up to Premier to have them trouble shoot it.

swapping-out-o-rings-lsx-aps-fuel-rails

They didn’t find anything mechanically wrong with the car, which was surprising. All signs seemed to point to some type of air leak. And all the problems manifested at the same time which made me think the problem would be mechanical.

The current plan is to reflash the computer to its factory state and start the tune from scratch. It’s been a couple of weeks, but hopefully they will make some progress soon. With nicer weather on the horizon it would be nice to get my car up and running again. I guess this is the price we may for progress. More updates to come.