end of my rope

Wed Apr 7 07:26:16 EDT 2004

The first thing I would check is the hoses from the turbo to the intake.
Check for cracks in the hoses, this will cause all kinds of running
problems. Also check the intercooler. Possibly you might use a manual boost
gauge, as the factory one gets inaccurate with age. 

The silver box under the dash is your cruise control "brain".

Tony Hoffman

-----Original Message-----
From: Livolsi, Stephane [mailto:Stephane.Livolsi at investorsgroup.com] 
Sent: 07-Apr-2004 1:26 AM
To: Audi Quattro List
Subject: end of my rope

This is more a lament than anything.  Just throwing all the info out there,
hoping something will stick. Tell you what, if someone comes up with
something I haven't tried yet and it solves the problem, there'll be a few
bucks in it for them.

Patient is an 88 5ktqa - beautiful tornado red, cosmetically very nice and
has been running well since I bought it in Aug 2003.

A couple weeks ago I started having a 'missing' problem.  Idle was a bit
rough, but the miss was most pronounced under heavy load - for example, 2nd
gear, 2500 rpm and accelerating hard.  Also, boost and power are way down.
When accelerating, the car would accelerate but not as rapidly as it should,
and would periodically surge ahead, then cut back.  The surging ahead seemed
more frequent as I let up on the throttle.  To rephrase, the car would run
better as I reduced throttle. The car was definitely running rich. spark
plugs, exhaust, o2 sensor all black.  This rich running seems to be fixed,
but still have this missing and cutting out under power.

I have an 86 5ktq sedan which is not so nice cosmetically, but ran really,
really well.  I've had it for about 6 years and stayed on top of maintenance
and repairs.  The car ran flawlessly.  It has served as a donor over the
weekend.

Here's what we did:

Swapped over all coolant sensors and the idle/wot switch and isv. Swapped
the o2 sensor. Swapped over the spark plugs, coil, distributor, plug wires.
swapped over any suspect vac lines - checked all, and I mean ALL connections
and lines. Swapped over the fuel distributor, lines, injectors, including
the warm up regulator. Put in a new fuel filter and air filter. Checked the
fuel delivery and it DELIVERS...  1/2 liter in about 10 seconds. used the
DMM and checked air temp sensor, continuity of the temp sensor to ecu, coil
specs, grounds.....all check out ok. The cat is not plugged - trust me, it
is NOT plugged. Swapped the ECU from the donor into the good car, then went
back to the original ecu because it didn't make any difference. (86 donor
car has a mac 10, the 88 car has a mac 11c)

Swapped over the radiator but that was because we broke the neck on the old
rad.

I wrote the above on Sunday night.  Monday morning taking the kids to school
I get a few hundred meters from the house and Knock, Knock, Knock.  Oh Oh!
This is bad.  Serious knocking in the engine, changes directly with rpms.
Rod? Bearing?  Regardless of what it is, it's time for a transplant.
Fortunately I have a very nice MC engine sitting in the 86 5ktq.

Monday I do the transplant, get the donor engine in and took the opportunity
to install the new engine mounts and valve cover gasket that have been
sitting in my basement for a while.  Tuesday, hook everything up, check,
double check, triple check connections. Fire it up and at first it ran quite
poorly with a steady miss.  This really annoyed me.  Everything in that
engine bay came out of the 86 parts car which ran like a top! We managed to
get a good idle after swapping the under dash Idle Volume Control.  Thanks
to SJM's site where he has part numbers for different cars, we found the one
in the car was incorrect, but the donor car had the right one.  

Also, we found that there is a silver metal box in the driver's dash
(screwed to the inside of the lower dash) that has a blue and white wire
cut.  It almost looks like someone did it on purpose, but they sure left the
wires frayed.  putting the 2 ends of the wire together doesn't seem to
improve anything.  Anyone know what this box is and could it be related to
the hesitation under acceleration I am experiencing?

So now we have a nice smooth idle, occassional burbling, no black exhaust.
The problem is still the acceleration and boost.  When I accelerate it
sounds like an air cooled VW, and has the power of one too.  I just don't
get it.  What have we missed?  What was left in the car that could affect
acceleration? 

Ecu wiring?
Wastegate frequency valve (this is on the firewall by the coil, right?)? Oh,
I also noticed a purple wire running under the passenger side carpeting
going towards the rear of the car.  The other end is unattached in the area
of the ecu.  Can't see where it would connect to though.  It definitely does
not look like it was factory installed so I don't think it is a likely
suspect.

Like I said before, cash for innovative ideas that can cure this.  You won't
retire on it, but I'll make it worth your while.

Stephane
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