so i have a 04 coupe with a turbonetics st. i have been having a few problems lately and i was looking for what someone thought.

about 2 weeks ago i was driving out of my neighborhood and i "got on it" and i took first all the way out and then shifted into second and as soon as it built boost it went pop. now i pulled over and opened the hood and went right to the intercooler pipe and sure enough it popped off. but at least i also bring tools with me for something like that haha. now you guys with the st kit will know what im talking about here. it popped off at the coupler that goes over the plastic maf. i think its just a horrible setup and i cant wait to change it. but anyway after i put it on it came off about 3 more times that week. so last weekend i took it all apart and redid all of the clamps. now i dont have any popping off anymore.

now the new problem. every once in awhile when im cruising and i downshift and build boost and go it hesitates and feel like i popped the pipe off again. so i pull over and with socket in hand i go to look but none of the clamps were off. i left the car running and the idle was going from around 1000rpms to less than 500rpms and would almost stall but bounce back to 1000rpms. so i couldnt figure out what was going on and im in the shoulder on the side of a highway. so i get in shut the car off for a second and turned it back on. put it in gear and drove away. the car ran fine. later that trip i dedcided to see what would happen if i hit boost. and nothing happened it ran fine.

now it just did the same thing to me tonight and now its got me thinking. what do you guys think is going on here? overboosting? am i hitting fuel cut? or what popped into my head tonight was the maf. because thats where the clamps usually came off. do you think it may have messed the maf up at all? and when i would shut the car off it would reset itself or something along those lines?

by the way the car doesnt have a boost controller and it runs 6lbs no more. and never once during any of t his did it throw any CEL.

thanks for your help

 

does your pipe have a hole in it?

 

i dont know ill have to spray it down tomoro at work with some soapy water. so you think its still a boost leak?

 

Sounds like a vacuum leak. You can use brake cleaner to find a leak at idle. It's a lot less messy than soapy water. Make sure you recheck your hoses and clamps too.

 

+1 I agree

 

but wouldnt this happen more often if it was a vacuum leak? i can go out right now and beat the ***** off of it and it would have any problem its just out of the blue i hit boost and it happens not always

 

Don't answer, he'll charge you.

 

hmmm.. i would check for leaks.. as far is the popping and maf housing just popping out of place, just sounds like poor install.

 

def sounds like a vacuum leak, could be there's a whole in one of the pipes and its getting bigger and bigger, so the small vacuum leak could be a big vacuum leak

 

i havnt had any trouble in the past few days but i havnt really hit boost so i dont know whats going on. i have no other drivabilty issues

 

so i pulled the maf housing out today at work and the plastic housing is warped into the shape of the clamp that was so tight. so here is what im thinkin. its not sealing fully againt the plastic and it causing a boost leak which is letting outside air come in and "confuse" the maf which would give me that drivablilty issue. then when i turn the car off the maf is normal again then i turn it on and it runs fine.

 

I have heard of issues with the MAF housing and boost leaks. The factory MAF housing monitors both air intake temperature (AIT) and MAF.

We eliminated the MAF housing on my car by using an HKS AIT sensor mounted into the upper Greddy intake tube to handle monitoring of the AIT, and placing a 2k ohm resistor between the factory AIT sensor lead and ground to keep the factory ECU from throwing a check engine light based on the elimination of the factory AIT sensor.

Also, we used one of the F-CON's option voltage outputs to feed into the ECU MAF sensor input to prevent the check engine light based on the elimination of the MAF sensor. To do this, we created a voltage output map based on MAP/RPM. If you need to see the map, let me know and I'll send it to you. We (Roger at Japtrix and I) created the map using trial and error, as well as some input from Sharif. It may not be perfect, but it seems to be working.

Edit: I don't know whether you have an F-CON, but you can create the same map we did using other controllers. If you do not have a suitable controller, the Coolingmist Smart Injection DMS and Failsafe MAY suffice (I think it will, but I have not tested it for this). It's about $200. http://www.coolingmist.com/detailmain.aspx?pid=1099

 

hopefully ill be getting the hks fcon v pro sooner than expected so once i get that ill be able to eliminate all this mess. its just sucks driving because i dont want to mess anything up

 

does anyone think it may be in the tune. like the ecu is seeing boost and being like hey whats this and cutting fuel or something? just a thought probably a bad one haha