Ever since I've put my car back together from fixing my oil leak it doesn't want to idle right, but it's a strange problem. When I first start it up it will try to hunt for it's idle for a few seconds, it will dance around 500 rpms almost ready to die for a little while until it finally pulls itself up to where it is supposed to be. Sometimes it will do this quickly, other times it will hunt for a good 45 seconds or so, sometimes it doesn't ever seem like it is going to find it. In any case if you give it any gas it will almost always die immediately. If you do manange to give it such a small amount of gas that it will rev up and not die it will rev just fine after about 1200 rpms or so.

After you get it to rev a little bit when you let off it MIGHT return to idle or it might not. In any case if you actually can make it move and manage to drive it for about a 1/16th of a mile it runs perfectly and it won't get me any more trouble until I shut it off again. To make it even better I have noticed that it seems to be much worse if the motor is warm. If I start it when it has been sitting overnight it will idle just fine and run just fine until I shut it down and start it up again. But like I said it's not consistent, sometimes it straightens itself out quickly, other times it doesn't.

To add a little more info, I changed my intake with my nice new powder coated one, is it possible that I have a vacuum leak around one of the fittings or possibly around my EGR block off plates? I'm thinking of putting a hand vacuum pump on one of the intake fittings, should it hold any kind of vacuum, and if so how slowly or quickly should it leak down?

One more little bit of info, while adjusting the valves we naturally had the belt off and the alternator disconnected and moved out of the way so we could get to the drivers side. We adjusted them and put the valve covers back on and started it up. We finally got it to what I feel is pretty close to perfect. There is no way they are too tight, I barely tightened them at all, but they are not making noise. In any event we fired it up before we put the belt and such back on to see how it would run. It ran great, didn't have to hunt for idle or anything. As soon as we put the belt back on it the car started acting stupid. I am fully confident that removing the belt will solve my problem, but that's obviously not an option. It seems like just the extra accessory load is causing it to stumble.

Any ideas?

 

Ok, thinking it might be a vacuum problem I re did all the fittings on the intake with teflon tape (I would have done so originally but I didn't have any) I also reconnected my recalled fuel pressure gauge to see if it was possibly a fuel problem. I fired it up cold and sure enough it idled fine. I got out to check for any fuel leaks around my gauge fittings and rev'd it up a little, fine. Rev'd a little more, fine. Rev'd it one more time and it died as soon as I let go of the TB.

It didn't want to start back, but I got it and it tried to hunt for idle, then sputtered and died. I tried again and coaxed it abot 2000 rpms for 2 seconds and then let off, it idled normally. I shut it off and immediately started it back up and it wouldn't idle again.

WTF?

 

well it does sound like a vacuum problem to me too, but i have no idea on this one (since its at the bottom, ill TTT for ya)

 

Are you getting any codes?