Hey guys, my car has been good for well over 800 KM. I only had a few loose bolts to tighten up, and the rear end dope was low, but anyway.. The first time my SES light came on was today. It's a 52*F day, and I was cruisin down to buy some Corona, and get some gas. I hit the expressway going 110 KM/H and after about a minute my SES light popped up. Could it be because of my open element air cleaner, and the cold air rushing in?

 

EGR valve.....for sure..

 

X2 on EGR.

But to be specific.... EGR solenoid!
The ECM applies power to it, it's supposed to open, letting vac to the actual valve.
ECM has no idea if the valve itself opens or not. It just gets feedback from the switch inside the solenoid that is supposed to close when it gets vac applied to it.

You can quite often take it apart and clean it up. Or replace it for a couple hundred bucks (new).

Don't be tempted to bypass the switch! If you "lie" to the ECM that way, you do all sorts of nasty damage. ECM thinks it's getting fuel from the EGR stream, so it leans out the mixture, and screws with the timing. With no actual EGR stream, you'll go lean, and possibly burn up the engine.

Check for cracked plastic vac lines. Very (!) common fault.
I tend to replace them all with rubber hose.

 

Jeez! and Im the one thaking the drugs?

 

Yup, you sure are.

 

I agree...except I didn't think the egr has anything to do with fuel mixture...I don't even have an egr anymore...and no problems....egr = exhaust gas recycler/recululator so it should just be putting dirty air into your motor to 'reburn' so to speak....

 

actually, two things:
1. it's exhaust gas recirculation
2. the "dirty air" (exhaust gas) routed into your intake takes up a specific amount of air, thereby reducing the amount of air that is required to be mixed with fuel and hence reducing fuel consumption. the ecm needs to pull out some fuel for this and add some spark advance to burn the leaner mixture (normal mixture + exhaust gas).

 

I went through my Chiltons manual this morning.. It seems easy enough to get it off the intake so I'm gonna give it a go. I priced out a new one at 149.99, so I'm gonna clean out the old one and see if there's a difference. I'll update tommorow morning.

 

I got bored and did it tonight.. The valve was stuck closed, and I had a broken vacuum line, so I redid most of them.. I also found one on the front drivers side on the Throttle body that was capped off, any ideas on what it could be?

 

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/faq-...-diagrams.html

Hope that helps.

 

Pull up your code in TunerPro some time....
Or I can post it.
It's all there.

Subject has already been cleared up, but....

 

For some reason it won't let me open them up...

 

A few vacuum lines crumbled in my fingers so I changed them out.. I used some nice silicone ones we had from our other project car.

I notice a strong hissing noise when I start the car up, I think it's for the thermac, but I can't find out where it's coming from.

 

Tbi's are pretty noisy down the throat. Make sure youre not just hearing that. It's fooled me a couple times!

 

Yeah, I guess you have to be a member now or something. lame.

 

Seems to run alright now.. Changed the oil.. Royal Purple 5W40..

I also found a problem with my rear brake from the beginning, For some reason the barb on the ebrake pulled out, I didn't even notice until I pulled the ebrake, with the drum off.. Damn thing.. I used a stainless hose clamp, and a washer to fix it..

 

Bump: Light's back on.. I bought a TBI Rebuild kit today, so I'm going to do that and see if the problems return. I think it could be an O2 sensor, but times is hard.. I'm broke.

 

Did you follow rule # 1 and pull codes?

 

I've had an EFI car for 4 years and could honestly never figure that out.

 

http://sethirdgen.org/dtc.htm

Read that, it's stupidly easy, you really should do it.