Oh no, what\'s wrong with me car!

[DarranJones]

Hi guys,

Firstly I apologise if this has been asked before, but I just wanted to describe my specific symptoms.

Started the rex this morning to go to work. Fires up fine just like usual. Holds at around 2k rpm. Usually the car settles to around 1k rpm  once it\'s heated up a bit so I didn\'t think anything was wrong. Then after around 2 minutes of idling everything goes very lumpy, gears knobs shakin, etc, etc. I open the door and look towards the exhaust and see more smoke than usual billowing from the back end, still white-ish in colour, but a lot of it. Anyway, I just carry on letting it run for a bit hoping that it\'s all going to settle down and it\'s just because it\'s frosty this morning or something, and then the dreaded \'HEAT\' light comes on.  :2eek  At this point I turned off the car, ran inside the house, and hid behind the sofa  

The cars only done around 50000 miles, and has had a rebuild in Japan, so I\'m kind of hoping it\'s not thrown a tip. To be honest though, the car came into the country in September and then sat in a warehouse for 2 months, and then when I picked it up I drove it for 2 weeks and the throttle cable seized up so it was off the road again for another 3 weeks. I only fixed the cable last weekend, but it\'s been running fine up until now.

The only mods I\'m running are HKS downpipe, silenced midpipe, Mazdaspeed exhaust, K&N induction kit, and a Blitz BoV. I\'m still running the standard ecu but I believe it\'s running a tad rich, but I guess that\'s to cope with the mods.

Also, i\'ve noticed in the past that when I put my foot down a bit I get a strong smell of petrol. I believe this has something to do with the manifold gasket being paper. D\'you think this might be related?

Any thoughts/advice would be appreciated.

Darran.

[rmagictastic]

Possibly, but not definately.

with the mods youve listed i would expect you to be needing a mapped ecu, and quite possibly some fuelling upgrades.

having a totally open exhaust and  performance intake will give big power gains, the fuel map at standard would have to be modified to sut all that extra air going through.  As a rule the tendency of the mods you have CAN (but not always) give an increase in boost and therfore promote leaning out (dreaded detonation).

I would get the car to a specialist ASAP.

do you know what boost your getting??

Nick

[DarranJones]

I\'m not really sure what boost i\'m getting because I don\'t have a boost guage.

I\'m a complete novice to be honest, but I wouldn\'t say it\'s any higher than standard.

[iaint]

The only mods I\'m running are HKS downpipe, silenced midpipe, Mazdaspeed exhaust, K&N induction kit, and a Blitz BoV. I\'m still running the standard ecu but I believe it\'s running a tad rich, but I guess that\'s to cope with the mods.

Nothing there that would make it run rich, completely the opposite.  It may run rich at idle but it\'s under load that is the key point.  With reduced exhaust back-pressure and better induction you\'ll be getting more air through the system but nothing to put more fuel in.  Issue would be on the second turbo under close to max throttle.

Unless something\'s very seriously wrong though it really shouldn\'t throw a tip idling on your driveway.  The problem is indicative of either a failed map sensor (or pipe come off it) or possible a blocked cat - you\'ve got a silenced de-cat though so it shouldn\'t be that.  The heat light is the cat heat snesor... if the cat\'s gone than what\'s triggering this?  Odd.

ECU reset could sort this... disconnect battery, foot on breaks for 20-30 seconds to drain residual charge, reconnect and restart to see if it\'s sorted.

[BlitzBoy]

Yep Iaint prediction is right I reckon, failed map sensor or dodgy pipe connecting to it will give those symptoms, not costly to fix

[DarranJones]

Cool, I\'ll be sure to hunt this sensor down in the service manuals

Darran.

[Freddy]

Hi Darran,

I\'ll mail you a pic of the map sensor shortly.