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I threw away the grease it came with and used some artic silver 5 I had laying around...
I had some thermal paste from my desktop cpu laying around so I used that. The module I have is the ACDelco 19179581. I also rebuilt with a new pickup and the ballast resistor thing as both had disentigrating leads and the pickup magnet was cracked.
Took her for a cruise today and it was a lot worse. I think I am going to pull the intake. Maybe the base is leaking inside the lifter valley or it never sealed. Point being the stocker is going back on and we will see how it behaves...
So I used a usb borescope to look at the runners I could get into. 1,2,3, and 4 were all spotless. The entire intake was actually. I couldn't get the angle to get into the rear runners but I am going to assume they are also fine... (perhaps a worthwhile assumption)
It's funny, now the car does a high idle for a while. Once it hits around 170 it kicks right down to 750 but when it's cold it sits around 1600. It is also around 25 degrees here so I guess that makes sense. When it first starts it sits up around 1800 then slowly comes down to 1400. Then it sort of jumps like the timing all of a sudden adjusts and it goes back up. When the rpms come down the first time it sort of runs rough until it jumps back up. This happens around a minute after it is running. I would tend to think vacuum leak but I used a whole can of starting fluid and could never find one. I have also noticed while I am driving when it is cooler that if I come to a traffic light it tends to idle around 1000 and then come back down. I would think this is due to the 180 degree thermostat though once it hits around 185 it kicks back down. This is mainly for about 10 seconds....
I've been really looking into the ebl flash. I just can't get myself to pull the trigger not knowing if it'll actually solve my problem or not. I don't think I have left anything else that could do it though so I don't know...
The only things I haven't done are the throttle body bushings, the ecm obviously, and fuel pressure while driving. However I think I can knock off fuel pressure because it behaves when you hammer it. And I think that eliminates anything else drivetrain wise as well. I don't know.
So it has been a busy couple of months since my last post. I have pretty much narrowed it down to where exactly it happens. At about 1/3 throttle it occurs and stops pulling, if you ease off the throttle you'll hit a point where it will actually clear up and then continue to pull. Also if you hammer it from that point it takes off like a bat out of hell.
Now that I have a little time I will most likely pull off the throttle bodies and bush them, the inner linkage on the rear throttle body is all wobbly (where the cable attaches) I also plan on pulling the lid and visually inspecting the intake runners, just to be sure. The car pulls too good of vacuum but it won't hurt to check anyway. With all the other crap that went wrong on the intake it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility that the mating surface of the ports was milled or cast crooked. Also have some other nagging issues to take care of...
Also, I am now 100% percent sure this wasn't there pre-intake swap...
So this is my last update. No I didn't burn the car or anything like that. I did in fact fix it. If you don't feel like reading the tldr is at the bottom.
After exhausting every damn possibility I could, I decided today to dig in and try my last resort in fixing it. The car has been sitting since July 15th. That is how frustrated I am with it... Since that intake fought me every step of the way to begin with I felt I would pull it as it isn't too bad of a job. Got off work at 2 and dug in.
By 3:30 I had a lower intake in my hands. I noticed something strange right away too. There was oil at the end of the runners. The head runners and valves were also caked like so.
I know for a fact those were pretty spotless when I pulled the old intake and that would also explain my excessive oil consumption that only just started. So I put the stock intake back on since I had the upper gasket laying around. Car started right up and the slight hunt at idle was gone. Took her on a drive, short but always would do it on this route, and the damn thing has a smooth power delivery everywhere now. I'm just kicking myself that I wouldn't have tried this long ago. My boroscope wasn't of high enough resolution to see the oil and thus I over looked it.
long story short. By ditching the renegade that has given me problems every step of the way, I now have a perfectly functioning corvette again. Goodnight all.
You need to get some thicker intake gaskets. I think they have them at autozone in their performance isle.
Not even sure that would help. I had a pretty hard witness mark along one edge of the gasket but the other didn't. Looking at the two side by side, it appears like the mill on the mating surface is angled wrong on the new intake... like that the taper is greater as you approach the bottom.
On top of that the runner alignment to the heads looking down them was not great either. That along with the thermostat hole being about a quarter inch off center, making the oring style gasket unusable, I'm pretty much washing my hands with this particular intake.
I was emailing Eddie motorsports and they agreed that those flaws should have been immediately rectified by the company that I purchased it from. Not telling me to cut a paper gasket, gob it up with rtv and use washers under the bolts to make it work because it is a "crossfire piece of crap." I may have said a few choice words to that company and they sent me a free t-stat gasket for my troubles and haven't answered since... most of the captive holes, the ones that bottom out, were drilled too shallow and tapped to shallow as well. I generally end up with the worst case problem I can have and in this case, I had every flaw in the renegade I had read about and then some.
Felpro make a gauge for checking the intake & head angles, I have one and call it the blue boomerang.
that's a trick looking tool. Had I had one of those I could have avoided quite a bit of aggravation and would have driven the car a lot more in the last year than I have. It's all about learning right?
I vaguely recall my cousin and I having a hard time getting all the bolt holes to line up on the intake but when I put the stocker back on it just dropped right on pretty much no fuss other than the gasket ever so slightly shifting... which was my fault.
Logged about 200 miles on the car between Friday and Monday with almost no complaints. There is still a little something if you're really looking for it but that being said, I don't think anyone besides my self or dad would notice unless you're looking for something to pick out. It is more of a jump now. You hit 2700 and the car just jumps a little like if you quickly blipped the throttle on normal acceleration. Only in first too. Its strange. I miss having power above 4300 rpms though lol.
02-16-2018, 12:55 PM
Had I had one of those I could have avoided quite a bit of aggravation and would have driven the car a lot more in the last year than I have. It's all about learning right?
