Exhaust leak or normal?
 

So I picked up my car last night at 0200am from the shop and it sounded surprisingly different compared to what it used to sound like with the LTH and CBE. I'm not sure if it's an exhaust leak or the AEM intakes. Force Fed Racing did an awesome job getting everything installed and back together. They worked extra late last night so I can get it back sooner. George and Johnny are standup guys and showed me a lot of new things. I talked to Tony at Motordyne and we ruled out the intake manifold. We also believed the Pulleys and of course oil cooler to be a nonissue as well. The oil cooler is impressive btw. Tony showed me how to build a stethoscope out of copper tube and some flexible tubing to search out exhaust leaks, I'll post a video of that when I make it. Here are four vids that may help. The first two videos are with PPE LTH, Motordyne XYZ Y pipe w cat, and Tanabe exhaust. The second set of videos has NST pulleys, AE Performance Oil Cooler, Motordyne M370 intake manifold, and AEM CAI installed with the listed exhaust components. ALL VIDEOS ARE WITHOUT A TUNE & SES LIGHT IS ON (uprev purchased [SES light flickers a lot when accelerating]).

BEFORE

BEFORE


AFTER

AFTER

Here is a quick video I made showing how I checked for exhaust leaks. I did not find any. I'll be bringing my car to Cali this weekend and have Tony at Motordyne check it out. I'm also taking it back to the shop tonight so I can take off this heat shield that is buzzing like mad.

I'd say get it checked out. Doesn't sound right to me. Maybe someone with a similar setup will chime in.

Do get it checked out!

Thanks. The power is definitely down, I've never heard a Z sound like this one does now, and I'm sure I'm in desperate need of a tune. I'm averaging 12.2 mpg right now. I'm taking it in to get the SES read, the car dyno'd, and get AFR readings. I do know that there is an exhaust leak at the Y pipe and header on the passenger side, but very minor. I put about 70 miles on it since last night.

I'm thinking the car is throwing a LEAN code. I have seen this with certain intakes, matched with the Motordyne intake manifold. If that's the case, the car is going to be pulling so much timing and adding so much fuel to the stock tune that it will cause the car to bog and the gas mileage to go to hell. When a car is running pig rich it can change the note of the exhaust as well.

EDIT: I just read about the SES light flickering under acceleration, that would definitely be caused by a lean code being thrown.

Just got back from the shop, I'm uploading dyno information right now. The issues was with the M370 intake manifold. I'm not sure if it was installed incorrectly or something is wrong with it. I did two pulls as you can see from the graph, the powerloss was really bad. We swapped out the manifold and put the stock back one and instantly made nearly 100whp more. Doing only two pulls and no ecu learning, I gained 16whp over my previous setup.

The first dyno is a comparison between my best run and the M370 manifold run. The second dyno sheet is a comparison with the stock manifold back on with my baseline dyno. Again this is no tuning and SES on.

I thought you had it installed prior to having the intakes put on? Anyways I doubt there's anything physically wrong with the manifold, maybe just a minor installation mishap? I can snap photos of mine installed if you need something to go off of. I installed mine well over a year ago so my memory isn't the greatest but there's an added hose that extends and Tees off.

If you could, we had to purchase the T connections and hoses and didn't have very good instructions to go off of. My mechanic is familiar with Honda's, this his first 370 he's really gotten his hands dirty. He's done a great job with everything else. I've been doing a lot of research with him as well with the M370. Tony sent instructions, but there was a lot of fill in the blank. It is still beyond me an intake manifold change gone wrong had this much of an effect on performance and sound! I have the RDF files to bring to Tony on the pulls I did. Spent $140 on 4 passes and a manifold swap. I'm none too happy about getting work done I shouldn't have had to but things like this happen, and it's just part of the game.

That would be great if you could. Tony @ Motordyne met me during lunch outside six flags on his own time to help. He thinks maybe one of the throttle bodies could have been disconnected. I also am missing the metal plate that sits on top. I bought this used and he is shipping one to me free! Customer service is absolutely outstanding. After I get it reinstalled and the car tuned, ill be posting results in the M370 million page thread as well as my own that turned more into a build thread. I will also post what the issue was after I figure it out.

Will do, I'll need to get the pictures done TOMORROW as I'm going back to the stock manifold. I'm ONLY doing this because with the GTM kit, I'm using the canned tune and need to be using the stock manifold so it doesn't throw the tune off.

I will tell you this, I LOVE that damn intake manifold. It made gobs of power towards the mid-range and we all know the 37VHR isn't a torque based motor.

Awesome. Looking at my dyno graph, I get a huge jump in power after 7000 rpm. I looks like it was still making power at 7500. My AFR's were 13.5-13.8 during that run as well. I don't mind losing a bit up top (3-5hp) if it really improves my mid range. I'll reinstall after I figure out what happened. I'm not sure if I should tune pre M370 or after. I want to see the difference, but I don't wanna spend the money to do it. I was charged $80 for the M370 back to stock and a couple pulls. Lord knows what tuning costs now days.

Still troubleshooting M370 issues. I'm missing the metal top plate that Tony is sending me. I tried unplugging a throttle body, but that didn't do much besides make it quieter and limit the revs to 1500...

So the videos with the strange sounding idle, thats with the M370 without the silver plate?
Without the silver plate, the manifold cannot be torque down properly...

Glad Tony is helping, even on a used one! Hope you get some good results.

So, has the weird sound gone now as well?

Interesting about the torque down not being possible without the plate, certainly sounds like the issue.

In for results, good luck OP

I have the stock manifold on and sounds great again. Once I get the silver plate, ill be installing and troubleshooting again. When the issue is fixed, ill post the fix action here and the results in this thread for closure as well as the M370 thread because its a much larger thread and more popuar.

Sounds good (pun *not* intended)

I was able to snap some photos today before the Motordyne manifold was taken off for the supercharger install. I'll start uploading them and update this thread.

The "T" should be connected to a total of 3 rubber hoses. The left of the "T" wraps all the way behind the manifold, the bottom connects to I believe either the crankcase or something that looks similar, the right same thing. The pictures I have in here ARE IN ORDER OF LEFT OF "T", BOTTOM OF "T", AND RIGHT OF "T" to where the hoses need to be connected.

http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f2...g?t=1333501780

Left of "T" Which wraps all the way behind the manifold and clamps to the manifold itself

http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f2...-10-30_406.jpg

Bottom of "T" to the crank case underneath the intake resonator.

http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f2...g?t=1333502488

Right of "T"

http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f2...g?t=1333502674


Sorry about the bad photos. I was in a hurry because I was in my mechanic's way.

Woot!, thanks for the pics! Will definitely come in handy

I found the F'n plate in the boxes I gave the shop! $%^#! I'm going to have them put this @!&% back on for free, hopefully today.

Well that's a pisser, makes you wonder just how clueless the shop is/was if they never even mentioned a missing part or couldn't find it in the box!

They pointed it out to me when I went to go pick up the box. I did give them a lot of stuff to install, I think like 4 different boxes. I don't blame them for being clueless, but just not looking hard enough when we needed it. Problem was I didn't know that piece had to be on there or that I even had it. I was in constant contact with him during the installk to try and make sure it was done right. The manifold was the only thing I had that we had to find instructions for and had any real questions about. Now that it's been installed and removed, it's much easier. All I want is the M370 back on and not be charged as it was still a mishap on the shop. He is already expecting more business from me next week any ways. To not do this would be highly egregious on their part.

Hi, I see that your sig says that you live in Vegas. Did you get the oil cooler and everything else installed there?

Thanks and good luck!

Yeah, they installed everything. They will be tuning it next week as well. I'll be a the cars and coffee thing tomorrow in Henderson if you have any questions. I'll also be at the shop Monday to get the M370 put back on. They usually work after 5pm... At least that's when I usually see them there. PM me if you have any questions about them. I just seen them tune 50whp out of a 05 C6 vette...

M370 was installed last night again, properly this time. The problem definitely was the seal between the manifold and the block. Now that it's on properly, it is definitely working as advertised. I'll apply any future performance updates to the main M370 forum

glad to hear you got it all worked out

Me too.:driving: