still burning too much gas...

[wytbishop]

Well unless there's a leak the injectors must be injecting it. I would definitely do a volume test.

Could it be leaking?

[mikeinaus]

i doubt i have a fuel leak. theres never any puddles under the car and i dont smell raw fuel ever. i was thinking i had a leak in my tank at one point in time but im fairly confident the system is sealed. as for leaking injectors im sure its possible however i have tried 2 sets with the same fuel mileage on both. i did however test the old set to see if it was leaking and they were not.

[crazycanadian]

i doubt i have a fuel leak. theres never any puddles under the car and i dont smell raw fuel ever. i was thinking i had a leak in my tank at one point in time but im fairly confident the system is sealed. as for leaking injectors im sure its possible however i have tried 2 sets with the same fuel mileage on both. i did however test the old set to see if it was leaking and they were not.

I am just going to put this out there... Everything electrically and a lot of the mechanical problems you are chasing are all verifiable.. Its the KISS principle... You have spent a lot of money changing and swapping parts with little to no change... But the 1 thing you still have yet to do is verify a/f ratio and fuel control while driving the car... This is the single most key thing to look at when trying to figure out a problem like this...

Mike I bring the labscope from work home sometimes, when I am working on a problem car... If you are free evenings the next time I bring it home I'll give you a call.. You can come out and we'll spend some time scoping your O2's and driving the car...

In the mean time see if you can rig up your fuel millage calculator to be easy to swap between cars... We could also use my car for an experiment since I seem to get better millage then you...

[mikeinaus]

the fuel mileage comp is now built into my dash. the only way to move it would be to break all the glue holding it, or get a new screen for it.

other then that yes i would like to play around with the lab scope. just text me whenever your free and i can come by...

[Ryan]

I see you've "thought" about upgrading grounds, and you SAID that you redid the vacuum.

Do the grounds.

Double check every nipple in the vacuum, all it might take is reversing two of the adjacent nipples in the EGR system.

[mikeinaus]

like i said the egr is just jimmy rigged, it was also recently installed and ive been having this problem for quite a while (before i installed it). im kind of broke at the moment so i cant afford to upgrade the grounds, however ill check the resistance in my electrical system and see if its sufficient. i am fairly confident they are in good condition though, my stereo is quite clear sounding and from what ive read online thats the first place to suffer from bad grounds.

[Ryan]

An ohmmeter often won't tell you jack about the condition of your electrical system because electricity does not behave the same at 1v and 10 000v. Thats why the low voltage resistance of plug wires is a useless measure. I feel like you're still just 'thinking' that the suggested solutions are not the actual solution. I think people do this on forums because they have already made up their mind on what they think the problem is and are just looking for someone to agree with them. Its silly.


For the grounds, simply remove them, wire brush their location and the terminal itself, and then bolt it back on. You can spread a $5 tube of dielectic grease around it if you want, or spray paint over the spot to stop corrosion.

The one on the front (passenger side) engine mount is important, as is the one that bolts on the front/top of the transmission to the driver side frame rail.

[crazycanadian]

If you want to check for bad grounds, you can Voltage drop them... This is the best way to check it and it doesn't take that long to do...

[Nd4SpdSe]

What do your plugs look like?

[mikeinaus]

my spark plug socket is at school. ill bring it home tomorrow and post some pics of them...

[mikeinaus]

heres some pics of the plugs i just took after driving home from school. i have a bad sense of smell so i didnt smell much but there was a slight burnt odor that i could make out.they felt dry, the ground strap was greyish white, and the bottom of the threaded part was black and had a bit of loose carbon it looked like. do these hint to anything for anyone?
plug # 2

plug # 4

plug # 6

plug # 1

plug # 3

plug # 5

[Nd4SpdSe]

Those plugs look perfect (how many kms on them?) , if they're all like that, I'm going to say that there's nothing wrong doing on in the motor or the mixture, and it's NOT running rich. Similar to this, this is rich:



I'd be curious to what a vacuum gauge says under regular cruising (unfortuntaely I never had one onmy Mx-3 for me to compare) but wondering if she's working hard for some reason.

[mikeinaus]

thats my cell phone so i dont have macro on it... the plugs are maybe 7 months old? my vacuum gauge is extremely sensitive to throttle, especially in higher gears. its weird cuz it acted completely different with the old chipped ecu. very slightly throttle changes, were talking barely increasing in speed puts the vacuum close to 5 in 5th gear. fyi im sitting around 15.5l/100km on the first 60km of this tank

[wytbishop]

The extra fuel that you're consuming is definitely not being burned. My guess is that it's going straight through the engine and out the tailpipe somehow.

[mikeinaus]

does the fact my exhaust never gets very hot mean anything? with the engine fully warmed up i can hold my hand on the tip and its warm but not hot by any means...