Though this car has always been a bit doggy on takeoff it has improved a bit with the new head gasket, However im wondering if it could be better than it currently is.... WHen i had her tore down for the head gasket job i played with the tvis a bit, i was curious to see what all there we to it since ive never seen one in person before lol. I did the typical check on the sctuator like i normally do on things like that, and what i used to do back when i worked on cars with vaccume advances and such,. I licked my finger and put it over the nipple of the actuator and then moved it, no suction so i pushed it all the way in and placed my finger on it and then (while holding my finger on it to not let air inside of it) released the lever. In my opinion it should have gotten about halfway and stoped from the vaccume, and i should have had suction on my finger as well, but none of these things happened as no matter how i moved it there was no suction nor air pressure. Now i know this is a bit of a redneck test on a vaccume controled system but its always proven to be a reliable way to see if the diaphram that makes it work has a hole or not. That being said i didnt mess with it anymore than that , well other than replace my vaccume lines that run it, I figured my silly little test could have been wrong and i had no way to change it anyway as the parts stores around here never give me the correct parts for this car. Besides i was more conscerned about whether my head was any good or not since the gasket blew. just wanted to get her running again. However now its been a few days and im wondering about the tvis actuator and whether it is working. I did a video the other day just to listen for strange sounds and their sources, and i noticed what sounded like a vaccume leak around where the tvis system is mounted. Its like 4am here so i dont want to wake the neighbors by messing with it in the dark so when i wake up tomorrow im going to check it out. First thing i will do is check the position of the actuator when the engine is off, and then see where it is while shes running, from what i have read on here it should be in the open position with the engine off and closed at idle, if i am correct and the actuator is bad then i get the fun job of trying to locate a replacment, hmmm maybe i can retrofit something else that i can find around here to do the same job, funny thing is my car is an automatic and never goes to the 4000rpm needed for the system to open in the first place lol. even at 70mph its usually only at 2500 rpms. But i would rather the system work as it is supposed to, im just anal about things like that.
No I did it at the diaphram itself. Today I checked it out. I held my finger on the shaft of it while I had someone start the engine. It moved to the closed position so I guess its working then. Though now that I understand how its supposed to work I wish I had cleaned it out while I had it off lol. Oh well next time I will. My next best bet would probably be the cat converter, planning on removing it tomorrow if I can and hollowing it out. I can smell it whenever I climb a hill, smells like rotten eggs lol.:turtledance
Hey Spidy, I still think that the vacuum diaphragm on your TVIS is bad and that you probably have a small vac leak there. As I mentioned before when I recently redid my head I completely removed the butterflies and screws and plugged the hole permanently on the bottom of my diaphragm (which was absolutely not holding any vacuum). Then I did a primo-sanitary job of putting all new lines routed correctly on the entire engine. Car runs good and strong throughout all rpm ranges without the tvis enabled. I suspect that you do have a slight vac leak that can easily be plugged for now, since it would be such a pain to disable it like I did (unless you like pulling the intake manifold and hard to get at braces and hardware). Vicdat
It probably is leaking, but the valves are pretty gummy too, the butterflies i mean lol, so its likely its sucking air around them since i didnt clean em while i had it apart like i should have, as for removing my intake... well the bolts on the braces pretty much striped out when i went to remove em to do the head gasket and that is the only reason i left the intake in the car when i pulled the head. would have been far easier to remove it after i got the head out, pul it out in one piece. if i plug off the vaccume line all it will do is leave it wide open and would definately kill my takeoff power so im going to leave it be for now.
In the future, if you can get it up on a lift it will be a little easier to get to everything from underneath ...especially if you have skinny arms. As it is I think you might be able to plug it by following the hose up to the top to wherever it connects. Any vacuum leak always sux!
i dont have acces to a lift lol. i know exactly where it connects to, that isnt the issue. ill try to explain this a bit better. no vaccuume..... valves are open vacccume ..... valves closed. they remain closed untill you hit a certain rpm that way you dont lose power on takeoff and get a nice little gain on the top end. its supposed to open up at 4000 rpm from what i read on here but i think mine opens at 3000 because while on the highway it seems to open up and get more power about that point. so as you see if i plug off the line all it will do is leave the butterflies wide open causing an even worse takeoff problem.:lol2
