Pig Rich Diagnosis (balancer, fuel regulator, vacuum leak)?

bbird94

Registered User
Hey guys,

Just a little heads up for those in the future! I have been floating the boards lately trying to figure out why my car was dumping so much gas into the cylinders that the car wouldn't even stay running. I looked everywhere and like all of us after a little cussing I found the problem:rolleyes: .

The problems I was having was that the car was running very rich when it would run for a short few seconds. The vacuum was reading about 10in. of vacuum. It was very hard to start and felt like it was running on 4 cylinders, black smoke was spewing out of my exhaust. Last, half the time it wouldn't even fire!

First, I checked the fuel rail and the gas coming out of the schrader valve seemed sufficient to dismiss anything bad in the fuel system. Next, I found that a bad balancer could cause this, checked it and it looked good. Next, I checked all my vacuum lines and they all seemed to be looking good. So running out of options I thought I must have a bad seal somewhere in the blower assy. and no, everything looked good. So I decided to just check the intake manifold bolts for kicks and WOW were they loose:eek: . Five of them ended up being hand loose and four of them were all over one cylinder. Pulled the manifold off and it looked like I was burning some coolant since it looked to be passing over into one of the oil passages.

A buddy of mine did some research for me and he found that some guys are doing alot more than what the Haynes manual suggest. Haynes says to two-step torque the intake bolts them to 11lbs. and throw the gaskets on (I believe dry). So I did it my own way like how all other SC' ers do it and torqued the manifold to 22lbs. and sprayed the gaskets with Permatec Head Gasket Copper Spray and last put some Permatec Water Pump & thermostat Gasket Sealer around the coolant passages on the heads. I got everything cleaned and took my time installing everything and it seemed to look all good!

For safe measure and since I had never done it in the past. While I was changing the gaskets I changed the o2's, thermostat, and I few other small items that I don't think will aid in this problem.

I finally got the car all back together and now it seems to idle good, car no longer seems to run rich, coolant guage finally stays steady and more:) ! Who would of thought that a loose intake manifold would cause all of this, huh. Just thought you guys would like the heads up after all the help you have given me thank you and I hope this helps you all!

Later,
Brandon
 
I also had seen some info about torqueing them to 11 ft lbs and I ended up having to do mine again. The next time I torqued them to 25 ft lbs I believe. It ran fine after that, but I don't have that car anymore. Glad you got yours figured out.
 
That's exactly what I'm fixing on my wife's '90. I noticed some whisps of white smoke leaving the tail pipe during the winter weather. To make matters worse, I didn't see any coolant in the overflow tank. It turns out it was soooo cold, that all of the coolant shrank into the engine and radiator.

Turns out, the lower intake manifold bolts were totally loose. I initially used some teflon sealant on the threads and found that would loose my torque on the bolts over night (when doing the rebuild). It took me a few days (back then) to get them to stay tight. I'll be using some black RTV this time though.

Once I got the drivers side accessory bracket off, it was easy to tell that there was an oil leak right around the lower intake where it mounted to the heads and block.
 
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