I was going to cap off the EGR valve today... When I realised something.

The car ides when the EGR diaphram is pushed up, towards the vacuum line that hooks it up to the EGR solenoid. It idles GREAT.

Now, with the diaphram up, in that position, I understand I'm letting a vacuum leak into the engine, right? Thats how the EGR works? Then why does the engine cough and die when I let the egr diaphram go back down towards the manifold?

The car runs like **** with the EGR in the relaxed position with the diaphram towards the manifold, but when pushed up it runs great, BUT I GET PINGING!!! ARGH! What should I do? Just back the timing off more and see if the pinging goes away? I'm running 93 octane...

The car is almost undrivable unless I wedge something under the EGR to keep the diaphram pushed up against the top....

Can anyone tell me whats going on?

ALSO.... I just thought of this last night. When I took the old distributor out of my car, I only made a mark for where whe distributor was when it was bolted down, I didnt mark where it was when its twisted up out of the gear... So it MIGHT be off by a gear... Would that cause these problems or would my car not even run with it off by a gear?

 

The distributor won't be off a gear. It can only fit in two ways, right and backwards. There's a slit in the bottom of the distributor that makes it match up with the cam. If it was backwards it also wouldn't start. As far as the egr it needs to be disabled in your chip to be effective. Try plugging it and plugging the vacum line at the tbi. It might work. I'm guessing the bad idle would be a vacum leak symptom so try and stop the vacum at the tbi.