Need you help guys. New motor issues.

[Kdouglas89]

**Need your help guys*** Title mistype.

I am going to cut straight to what's going on.

I had a shop order a JDM motor for me. I paid roughly $1500.00 for the long block. When I get home, I notice my throttle is sticky, and causing it to high idle. I can manually push it back, and its fine. Just sticks every now and then. The shop still has my 95 ECU and is socketing my link chip. It takes him about 2 weeks to finally socket the chip because I guess one of the shop guys screwed it up the first time. I drop the car off to have him install my innovate WB, and plug the WB into the ECU. I get the car back, and its driving like crap. He told me he swapped the wires, but I figured out the next day he did not invert the CAS. So the next day I inverted the CAS, and am just looking over the numbers on link. I notice the car is smoking. I do a compression test, and all but cylinder 3 is 160ish, and 3 is 140-145. link shows coolant temp is 213-215. On dash the car is not over heating, but that temp seems way to high for my likings.

I call the owner of the performance shop, and address the issue with the cylinder, and he says its fine, and just do a wet test. I address the issue with him not inverting cas, and he states you don't have to, you only have to swap plugs. I tell him he can check out dsmlink wiki, but he continues to state he has never heard of inverting cas on a 99.


Bottom line fellas, I am not as mechanically inclined as this guy, and it seems he tries to bullshit around issues. Its a good 30 min drive out, and they are only open M-F 8-5, and I work M-f 8-5. I am needing some advice.

I still am on warranty with this motor, but only for another week or so. He states I can drop the car off and they can determine why its smoking, but it's such a hassle having 1 car between the wife and I.

EDIT: I am not trying to fix any issues myself. I need help trying to diagnose what could be the issues, and be able to have evidence so he doesn't try to keep talking around the issues.

 

[VtecvrsTurbo]

The 145 in cylinder three is only 15psi off of the other cylinders and is within spec.

The smoke you speak of, what color/odor does it have?

Runs like crap, how so? Idle? Poor vac? Details.

Also, what reading are you getting with the WB

 

[Kdouglas89]

Pure white, like a really smoggy smell.

It did until I jumped on link and checked the box to invert CAS. The performance shop manager who apparently has built over 10 DSM's wasn't aware you needed to do that, and tried to argue with me about it.

Before I adjusted trims, I was cruising at around 19-20ish. Now its around 15-16.


EDIT: Honestly, I am just really nervous because of the amount of money I spent. I don't want to be screwed past my warranty date on this motor.

 

[VtecvrsTurbo]

19-20 is insane high for cruse AFR. At an idle that is "ok" but still high.

That smoke you describe sounds like a headgasket. Have you checked your oil/coolant for any signs?

This smoke, is it all the time, only at WOT, only idle? Let us know.

 

[curt-s]

My WB was reading 15-16 when I had a leak at the O2 housing to downpipe gasket. New gasket and a tightenin' put the numbers where they needed to be. You might want to torque them up, as they can loosen after a couple heat cycles. A problem with the flex section may also introduce more air than wanted. This is assuming your WB is in the downpipe, 36" from the turbo. If you have it in the stock O2 spot, it may be one of the three gaskets prior, but your narrowband simulation should pull that inline with excessive trim... so I'm assuming you're running the stock O2.

I'm wondering if a slight bit of water/coolant in the combustion chamber would throw off the readings ever so slightly because the evaporation and release of oxygen? Hmm

 

[Kdouglas89]

I adjusted my fuel trim and got it to around 15-16 while cruising. I could prob tweak it a bit more. I replaced front o2 with the WB.

I have not noticed anything with the coolant. I was gonna flush the system this weekend and see what temps looked like after that.

It seems like it only smokes randomly. Sometimes at idle it will smoke. I will rev it, and it will smoke quite a bit. Sometimes it doesnt smoke at all.