Rough Rider - Part 1

Maintenance, ASC Delete - Hoping to cure the hesitation.

Since the plugs and coils did not resolve the issue with the hesitation we moved on to the next normally neglected maintenance items. By we I mean Jeremy. As the only thing I seem to be good at in this quest in documenting and taking pictures. It really was a one man job. He has been there and done that a dozen time already as well.

So on the intake manifold side of things there are several hoses that get extremely brittle and cracked. These leak vacuum which can lead to a myriad of issues. The hesitation hopefully one of them. Seeing the state of everything being original, I felt good about the normal maintenance.

Items replaced:

• All the vacuum lines to and from the charcoal canister.
• Vacuum lines to and from the secondary O2 pump.
• The hose from the Intake Air Control Valve to the intake elbow.
• 90' elbow as a whole.

Just because.

• Washers on the dipstick

Jeremy also showed me how to clean an idle control valve on these properly. The flap inside should be moving freely. Make sure not to spray it and turn it upside down. You don't want to get any brake cleaner on the electrical portion of the unit. 

Brittle worn out vacuum hose bottom. New silicone hose top.

ASC device. It has a flappy, flapper in there.
Similar to a throttle body.

We also deleted the ASC device all together. Why would you want to do this? ASC is all about removing power to help keep you from over steering or spinning out. Primarily designed for wet/snowy/unfavorable conditions. Being the performance enthusiast I'd like to think I am, I don't want my power source being taken away when this system thinks it should be. There is a button that would normally deactivate this system in the car. However mine did not ever seem to work. So instead of keeping a useless system on the car we ditched it.

It's an easy go. You simply need a non A 90' boot, IAC to elbow hose, and shorter bolts. In doing so, I did not have a 10-ohm resistor to properly disable the traction control and ABS lights. They now proudly stare me down now. Its a simple fix, just need to get to it.

New non ASC hoses. Part numbers for reference. We are strong believers in Real OEM.

Shorter hardware from, shhh, a Honda. :)

New non ASC elbow installed.

 

  My mind has been distracted immensely since Helena fell ill with the ill running situation. I tend to hold on to these things unfortunately. So, how is she running now? Well let me tell you, like absolute garage. The hesitation seems worse than ever at this point. I was trying to leave a parking lot and had the car floored however, it felt as though I was in Geo Metro struggling to take make it to 40. I about got ran over.

  After that little incident it was time to park her again. Got to get down to the nitty gritty. The crazier part about it, no check engine light, at all. We have another car apart that is having similar issues. His was running on 5 cylinders on occasion, no check engine light. Both vehicles being obd2 and automatic and 96+.

  The joy has been stolen away so quickly. I'm bummed about it but, I am learning a good bit through this process. We have access to working used parts for testing, are replacing items that need to be replaced anyway, and adding a few performance minded tid bits as we go. I'd say over all, it all comes down to proper maintenance (or lack there of in this case) and proper time spent diagnosing things.

  More to come once we tear in to her again.