Do you know what it is?.....A kobayashi maru?
It's not real...but for tonight, and this restart,... I'm having to deal with it.
A kobayashi maru is the "No win scenario" that Star Fleet Cadets had to deal with as one of their final exams before graduating the academy...Of course you'd have to be some Star Trek Goob to know all that, or at the very least have had to have watched Star Trek II....and for me, it's the latter......The movie had the first really decent special effects that I'd ever seen on the big screen,......And as Star Trek movies go,...I'm saying it was the first "good" attempt at bringing the hopelessly campy 60's TV series into the 80's
But the Kobayashi Maru,..........( say it in JT Kirk here, by pausing and enunciating each word)
The No..Win...Scenario....that sht is alive and well,...and running rampant in the garage at my house.
The car starts....but only after you pedal it. It runs a little rough for 15-20 seconds, the the O2 sensor comes on and it settles. Let it run for 15 more seconds, and it starts to pick up RPM,...run a little more, more RPM...as the engine starts to warm, it just keeps running faster...within a minute, it's running 1500-1650.
But you gotta shut it off...there's sht dripping under the car.
The water pump came fitted with a pipe plug on both sides so you could orient the inlet tube on either side of the pump. The instructions stated that the other plug was loosely fitted, and was dry, w/o any sealant of any kind.
You of course forget that, and put the pump in place,...and fill the engine with anti-freeze. It takes actually running the engine to get a little heat in it before water starts to drip out of that loose fitting,...and it's dry, so tightening it doesn't stop the leak. ( doesn't matter,..you don't have an Allen wrench that big anyway) So,..you pull the damn plug,...antifreeze splashes everywhere,...the whole bottom of the engine, lines, hoses, steering rack, Kmember,...all dripping now. The Allen head plug is huge....you don't have a wrench that big....so you overcome,...you adapt, you improvise..
A 3/8" nut fits in that hole...you cut a 3/8" bolt off so that it threads tight against that nut,...and you put it in the Allen head socket in the plug, you goop the threads w/liquid Teflon, and literally bolt that pipe plug back in..Once tight,.the bolt /nut combo just drop out of the pipe plug.
Fixed.
That oil filter adapter that looked so scary is in fact leaking...oil is getting past the 1/2" pipe nipple that you had to buy to extend the oil return hose far enough down to get the lower radiator hose to fit..And tightening the thing doesn't make one damn bit of a difference.
It's gonna need something else.
This was right after I bolted it all up,...pleased as punch that the lower radiator hose, just barely sneaks past everything else..
And there that leaky btch is..again before starting it and the leak starts...it's coming out of the threaded portion where it screws into the aluminum adapter....I'm gonna fix it the way I fix everything that has the potential to leak...I'm not gonna use Teflon as a sealant this time,....I'm taking it back apart,..cleaning it all up,...and I'm gonna use JB Weld as a thread sealant..works Everytime.
But that's another day....Today you restart the car...water leak is gone..oil leak starts to ooze..you think...this has got to be a freakin vacuum leak,..maybe the diaphragm in the PB booster is leaking,...you pull the plug out of the booster, the engine runs even faster, you put your finger over the open fitting, and the engine slows,..but....while you hold it,............the engine picks up RPM.
When you first started the thing, and the O2 sensor came online,..the engine idled at 1000 RPM, and the AFR was like 13:1. But as it warms, the AFR goes leaner,..by the time the engine is running 1600 RPM it's reading 15:1...
Every single plug looks the same,...barely showing anything at all....the tail pipe is clean,..no smoke of any kind. While the engine is humming along, there's an occaisional miss....just a real quick "poom-poom,...poom- poom" while the engine rages along.
So then,.....What did I change since last October?
The ITBs never came off the head,..and the head never came off the block. Only the oil pan got removed, and the pan vent got added. Timing didn't get messed with, the Balancer, and crank position sensor never got touched.
I may have adjusted the ITB's throttle screws,..but I cannot remember if I did or if I didn't. Regardless, that doesn't explain why the engine keeps getting faster.
The ONLY thing I did this time around was.......I coated the hot side. It was all rattle can painted before.
Ya think that the hot side is now more efficient now, and the WUE curve is too aggressive now?