04-24-17: Since I brought the nb2 home I have had a 'miss' that turned into a full blown 'misfire' and caused it to be parked for the past two weeks. One step colder plugs fixed it for a day, new coil packs did nothing, tried replacing the cam and crank sensor with good used pieces...they did nothing.
Then the week before last, when working on it I found this...
...that is a very cracked vacuum hose that went from the supercharger bypass to the throttle body. The cracks SEEMED superficial but I had the vacuum line so I replaced it...
...it seemed to idle better. Took it for a drive and it drove fine! Well that lasted less than a day!!
Then I decided to start hunting for more vacuum leaks. Bought like 6 feet of several size vacuum lines, some carb cleaner and started spraying....nothing. Then I got inside the car and heard what sounded like a vacuum leak....then it struck me and I got under the dash and found this...
...may be hard to tell what it is but it is the vacuum line that goes to the powercard and it had a small split just above the nipple it attached to. Cut the end off but couldn't get back on! I actually had to remove some of the plastic for the hole that the nipple protruded thru to get enough room for the vacuum line to go all the way on.
Easy enough...then I started it again and STILL heard a vacuum leak! Looked around some more on the inside and found this...
....another vacuum line with just a piece of electric tape at the end that had been tucked up under the hvac! It probably went to a boost gauge that is no longer there so I decided to just plug it for now. Started it back up and still these fault codes persisted...
...that was it for that day, as far as trouble shooting goes but I did find out I needed a new air filter....
....it was actually worse than it looks. Once removed the metal seam fell off and saw that the neck that a hose clamp would normally hold it on had been cut off and it was simply slipped on!! My bad.
Then last Friday I removed the plugs and found that the number 2 cylinder plug looked brand new as there was almost no carbon on it, unlike the others. So it wasn't getting spark and or fuel, thus the misfire. Pat aka patsmx5 has been helping me trouble shoot and he suggested I check the wiring for the powercard after seeing the plugs. Ironically this is exactly what I was doing as he texted me.
I tugged on one or two of the connections and one of the wires came loose! It was a purple w/ green stripe, I had no doubt this was for the number two fuel injector. After a quick Google search and no wiring diagram for the nb2, I knew Pat would have one. Sure enough he did and emailed it to me and sure enough that wire was for the number 2 fuel injector!
The soldering job was less than adequate and thus the wiring coming loose and seemingly causing the misfire issue. Unfortunately I was going out of town that evening and had to call it a day.
This evening I was able to get back at it and fixed that wire connection for the powercard. Started it up and still it had a terrible idle! Checked the fault codes and this time it said there was a misfire on cylinder four!! So I went ahead and redid the connections for cylinder four and three fuel injectors as they seemed flimsy but left the one for cylinder one fuel injector alone as it seemed much stronger and it had already been cut close to the ecu connection and didn't want to risk not having enough wire to fix it.
Started it up and it idled(and revved on occasion) great for about 15 minutes with no misfire code returning! Unfortunately I couldn't test drive it given the absence of a air filter and couldn't find one locally as it is a 3'' I.D. that is only 4" long and just over 3" wide. The DDM Works supercharge intake box originally came with a UNI foam filter(#UN-4300) so I just ordered a 2 Stage version of eBay, so hopefully it will be here this week and I can confirm the issue has been resolved.
I also received a broken oil dipstick from Mike aka chiefmg to mate to my Project G Precision Series dipstick handle, big thanks to Mike for sending it to me and he wouldn't even let me cover postage! Thanks again Mike!
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