well, while reading the "Installs" section of 240sx.org, i saw the "build your own custom short ram intake!" and was wowed. the guy (mark) did it with an s14, but i figured that having a DOHC s13 with an *almost* identical engine setup would do rather nicely. so i look into my engine bay, and afterwards i began to collect my materials.
i started taking things off my car, and had begun to get worried because there are more hoses than he mentioned (2 more in fact) and i did not know what to do with them. i ignored my gut feeling of "STOP!! ALERT!! ACHTUNG!! WARNING! CEASE FIRE!" and kept working. anyway, i finished it all up just fine, put a breather filter on the hose going to the valve cover and one to the throttle body, connected the MAF (after a 6 inch long cut of the electrical tape holding the MAF wire to the harness, then a retape) and plugged up the battery. fired it up, and BAM! it starts up perfectly, idles around 1100 - the usual cold start up idle - and then promptly coughs white smoke out the tailpipe and dies. i start it up again, and it dies. again. and again. and again. until i get tired of starting it up, and put the gas in to keep the idle up at 650, the normal idle. after a while of thinking, i decided to take it out onto the street and see how it drove. it drove BEAUTIFULLY! i was surprised with the power gain from my previous setup of a high flow filter in place of the airbox, and the sound...oh man the sound...
now, here come the barrage of questions
1. is my MAF malfunctioning? when i cut the tape with regular, household, blunt tipped 3 inch scissors, there was a lot of wire exposed. now, the wires weren't stripped, they still had the rubber shield, but they were showing through the rubber of the harness...which made me a little worried...anyway, i remember from a while back when i was having stall out problems, i thought it might have been my MAF, and when i disconnected it, it behaved the exact same way it does now. it puttered around and then stalled.
2. what purpose does the thin hose that's connected to the intake tube serve? i followed one end to the AIV, which i probably need to remove, and since my AIV wasn't hooked up, i figured that i didn't need to cover it.
3. what purpose does the fat (maybe 1" diameter) hose that connects to the underside of the intake tube serve? its right next to the radiator, adjacent to the throttle body, and i can't for the life of me follow the hose farther than the 3 inches down that i can see.
4. it was mentioned in the quide that one might need to crank the RPM's up a little bit "depending on engine condition". any idea where that damn screw is? i cant find it and i have looked. would it help me with my problem?
thanks for any help guys, i love my car, but i hate the way it acts sometimes. sorry for a very long post. its a very complex problem.
*edit* here is the link to the mod under scrutiny.http://www.240sx.org/links/ins...x.htm*edit*
Custom Short Ram = 2 stitches, idle death
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DrIfT_FoReVeR
- Posts: 74
- Joined: Mon May 24, 2004 2:14 pm
- Car: Driving, Drifting, Driving, Drifting
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DrIfT_FoReVeR
- Posts: 74
- Joined: Mon May 24, 2004 2:14 pm
- Car: Driving, Drifting, Driving, Drifting
Oh, i forgot to explain the "2 stitches part"
*DISCLAIMER* if you dont care about a funny and a bit of a horror story, then skip this entry. for all of you that either need a good laugh or a good lesson, read on. it shouldn't be too long.
when i was cutting the tube to make the "custom" rubber couplings, the blade i was using deflected off of the rubber, and found refuge a half inch in my hand all the way to the bone. needless to say, i had to call a friend to come pick me up and take me to the emergency room where i got 2 stitches.
funny part is that i had to wait 4 hours before a doc even came in to look at me because there were 2 people complaining of chest pain. anyway, after watching the end of 'tough guys' and 'death race 2000' on the TV, the doc came in and gave me 3 shots of some kind of local anisthetic, which by the way, doesn't stay in my body for more than 10 minutes before i can regain complete feeling because of some kind of immune system defect (for the better i may add). anyway, she comes back 30 mintues later and starts stitching me up, which i can feel every bit of, but having been pierced in the past (MISTAKE) kinda ups my pain tolerance a bit, so i just dealt with the searing pain for the 5 minutes that it lasted and got the hell out of there, where i went to the pharmacy, picked up my antibiotics, and then home, where i laid down in bed, promptly coughed out a puff of white smoke, and died. this morning (yesterday morning now) was when i completed the intake project.
and that's my story. id take a pic of my hand, but i doubt that anyone wants to see it. its just a little 3/4" red line with 2 stitches across it.
anyway, HELP ME WITH MY CAR! thanks! lol
*DISCLAIMER* if you dont care about a funny and a bit of a horror story, then skip this entry. for all of you that either need a good laugh or a good lesson, read on. it shouldn't be too long.
when i was cutting the tube to make the "custom" rubber couplings, the blade i was using deflected off of the rubber, and found refuge a half inch in my hand all the way to the bone. needless to say, i had to call a friend to come pick me up and take me to the emergency room where i got 2 stitches.
funny part is that i had to wait 4 hours before a doc even came in to look at me because there were 2 people complaining of chest pain. anyway, after watching the end of 'tough guys' and 'death race 2000' on the TV, the doc came in and gave me 3 shots of some kind of local anisthetic, which by the way, doesn't stay in my body for more than 10 minutes before i can regain complete feeling because of some kind of immune system defect (for the better i may add). anyway, she comes back 30 mintues later and starts stitching me up, which i can feel every bit of, but having been pierced in the past (MISTAKE) kinda ups my pain tolerance a bit, so i just dealt with the searing pain for the 5 minutes that it lasted and got the hell out of there, where i went to the pharmacy, picked up my antibiotics, and then home, where i laid down in bed, promptly coughed out a puff of white smoke, and died. this morning (yesterday morning now) was when i completed the intake project.
and that's my story. id take a pic of my hand, but i doubt that anyone wants to see it. its just a little 3/4" red line with 2 stitches across it.
anyway, HELP ME WITH MY CAR! thanks! lol
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DrIfT_FoReVeR
- Posts: 74
- Joined: Mon May 24, 2004 2:14 pm
- Car: Driving, Drifting, Driving, Drifting
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DrIfT_FoReVeR
- Posts: 74
- Joined: Mon May 24, 2004 2:14 pm
- Car: Driving, Drifting, Driving, Drifting
all the intakes that ive looked at dont have a little nipple for that one tube, and i just got my intake in the mail today and installed it, and that hose still isn't connected. is there anything i need to do to make it idle right? the people that i talked to said that none of the 240 intakes have anything for that hose, and noone knows what i'm talking about when i mention it. i know a lot of people that have intakes on their 240's, and no one has that hose connected, and it idles just fine. could it be something else? the little hose that goes to the throttle body is bent, like when you kink a garden hose, and i couldn't get it to be straight. i didn't want to cut the purdy yellow hose that i got with the intake any more than i already did, fearing that i'd render it useless by doing so, and knowing me, id prolly hurt myself again. also, my car runs completely fine, it even passed inspection with a bad o2 sensor. lol. anyway, i run my 0-60 in the late 7's, which isn't anything to gloat about, but my car definately doesn't run like crap. i know the thin hose goes to the AIV, which i reconnected, but what do the other 2 hoses do? one goes to the valve cover, and the other goes to an opening just to the right and below the throttle body. what are their functions?
thanks for the help. i know this is probably annoying, but im getting tired of holding the gas pedal down to keep it at 950 rpms, cause any lower than that, and it'll start puttering and smoking.
thanks for the help. i know this is probably annoying, but im getting tired of holding the gas pedal down to keep it at 950 rpms, cause any lower than that, and it'll start puttering and smoking.
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DrIfT_FoReVeR
- Posts: 74
- Joined: Mon May 24, 2004 2:14 pm
- Car: Driving, Drifting, Driving, Drifting
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DrIfT_FoReVeR
- Posts: 74
- Joined: Mon May 24, 2004 2:14 pm
- Car: Driving, Drifting, Driving, Drifting
Ok, i finally took it to a mechanic after realizing that my 240 DOES NOT HAVE AN IDLE ADJUSTMENT SCREW! <-(verified by a mechanic) and he charged me 75 bucks to replace almost every vaccum hose and kick up the idle at the throttle body turny thingy (i dont know what its called...its the semicircular metal piece that has the throttle cable connected to it) and now it idles. that fat tube, he said, blows air out, which i verified by putting my hand over it when he started it and revved it, so i put a big fat breather on it to keep **** from falling in, per his request, and now it runs fine. my only problem now is my extremely rich condition. another time...another place...
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DrIfT_FoReVeR
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- Car: Driving, Drifting, Driving, Drifting
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kamikazestorm420
- Posts: 2533
- Joined: Thu Apr 29, 2004 7:21 am
let me just take a sec here and say, Your mechanic is a bone head! Your are not suppose to adjust the throttle stop screw EVER. Which is what he did. That is a calibration for that throttle body. Your car does have an idle air adjustment screw located near where the large A/C line goes into the car on the passenger side of the intake manifold at the bottom. I know this cause I adjusted a 93 friday after I failed it on a smog insp. I think you need to find a new mechanic.
I agree with nistech.... your mechanic is not too smart.... and to prop the throttle body open to get it to idle is also... not too smart. You lose all control of fast warmup idle and high idle when the AC is engaged. Guess what... when the TB starts getting gunked up... your idle will lower....
any lines that are originally hooked up behind the maf in the intake draw air into the intake manifold... so you will have a vacuum leak. this is how i hooked up my lines, cost me about $3 total for everything.
The hole for the valve cover hook up is perfect to splice other lines from... its pretty damn big. In this picture theres only 2 lines hooked up... my idle was a tiny bit unstable with the crank/valve cover vent hose going to atmo (since the PCV draws its own little bit of air in too). I now have all 3 lines hooked up.
any lines that are originally hooked up behind the maf in the intake draw air into the intake manifold... so you will have a vacuum leak. this is how i hooked up my lines, cost me about $3 total for everything.
The hole for the valve cover hook up is perfect to splice other lines from... its pretty damn big. In this picture theres only 2 lines hooked up... my idle was a tiny bit unstable with the crank/valve cover vent hose going to atmo (since the PCV draws its own little bit of air in too). I now have all 3 lines hooked up.
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xTearsFallForeverx
- Posts: 140
- Joined: Fri May 28, 2004 6:50 pm
- Car: 1990 s13 Fastback
- Contact:
thanks for this post guys. I also did the short ram on my s13. ka-e. it idles like ****. I bumped up the idle control sensor. I have the big fat hose plugged off. when i let it breath in the open it tried to die and when i plugged it.. it ran ok. i guess ill try to hook up that hose to my pipe somewhere. my friend i think messed with my throttle position screw so now i have crappy start up / idle. then when it gets warm its fine.