Rough Rider - Part 2

  Given Helena's rough acceleration, I thought maybe the cats were clogged. It didn't seem like there was a lot of exhaust coming out the back of the car. Makes sense right? Sure...haha. So, we took down the mid-pipe to give the car a go without them. We discovered that one of the O2 sensors was banging against car due to an exhaust hanger that wasn't connected. The wires were frayed and bare. Glad we caught that one. The hardware to secure manifolds to the mid pipes was not stock either. Bolts were cheap and some were bent.

What the old O2 looked like. It was banging against the heat shields because one the exhaust hangers were not in place.

While we were under there, lets do the fuel filter. I didn't snap a pic of what came out of that thing but, I should have.

 Jeremy handling all of the hard work.

Drove it over to my local e36 specialist.

Shout out to Brad at: PartsEuropean.com

  He scanned my 328 with a snap-on MT2500. Codes came back for throttle position sensor, all four O2s, and the cam sensor. However my check engine light was not lit. Brad said that they can and do burn out on occasion. Someone before may have removed the bulb for it as well. This would explain no check engine light. Either way the check engine was indeed supposed to be on per his scanner. Makes perfect sense why the car was running bad but, no Check Engine Light.

New used TB with working sensor.

  I needed to replace that bad post car O2 sensor. Brad had one I could buy. Awesome. Also had a TPS. He cautioned against swapping just the sensor as the ohmage has to be spot on for the computer to be happy. I ended up just getting the whole throttle body. We got out of there and got to it.

Getting the throttle cables off.

  Popping the throttle cables out of the plastic holders takes a little care. The clips holding them snap easily.

 The next day I wondered back up to Jeremy's. My heat shields on the cats were rattling so I laid down a crappy weld job to hold them in place. We swapped in the new/used O2 then, reassembled. Since the code for the cam position sensor was still showing bad we swapped that one as well.

  So how did she do? The hesitation was still there but, better. It still felt as if it was lagging. When I would come to a stop after the car was warmed up it would also start running on 5 cylinders. Interesting. When I would take off again it would kick back to 6. Strange indeed.

Another trip back around to Brad for a re-scan and opinion on this one.