I just finished my cam, head, and intake swap as shown in the sig. One problem that I ran into when putting it all back together was the stock collector on the driver's side would not bolt back together tight. I tightened it as much as I could until it started to strip the bolt.

So anyway I'm trying to work out all my bugs of driveability. My question is, will a half inch gap or so on that collector cause my car to have no low end power? I'm talking barely being able to leave a stop sign without it popping and dying. At idle the car runs pretty darn smooth, but as soon as I try and blip the throttle it tries to backfire through the throttle body.

My theory is that with the car idling the pressure is equal but when i open the throttle plates it creates a vacum that sucks air up through the gap in the collector and backfires it threw the throttle body. Is that possible? I know backpressure is a big part of power, but I can barely baby this thing off a dead stop.

I'm using a loner chip to get me running better for data logging, but I want to figure this problem out first so i can atleast log some data.

Oh yeah SLP headers are my next mod, so I don't plan on using those poor excuses for exhaust manifolds much longer.
Thanks

 

sounds like it is in the tuning