power loss

[Torry Skurski]

Ok, so here's the latest update:

First of all, my car is now working properly.  I haven't dyno'd it again
yet, but you can really feel a huge difference.  Here's what it was:

It was a combination of two problems.  The first one deals with the RPM
switch that I installed.  Let me explain the switch.  It has a red wire
for power, black for ground, white for RPM signal, and then two switch
wires; one grey and one yellow.

The switch has dip switch settings to select the RPM that you want it to
activate.  The yellow wire is normally dead, and at the given RPM, it
supplies 12 V of power.  The grey wire works opposite, where it normally
supplies 12 V, then goes dead at the given RPM.  This is so you can use
either wire, to turn whatever on or off at the RPM.  Well, the intake
runners on the QR switch when power is cut to them.  So I used the grey
wire.  Well, turns out, the runners were switch backwards.  So the
secondaries were open at low end, then closed up top.  Double bad.  So I
figured the directions were printed wrong, so I switched the grey wire
and yellow wire.  When I tested it again, the runners did not switch at
all.  When I measured the voltage, it turned out the yellow wire
supplied 12 V below the given RPM, and 9 V above it.  So it turned out
to be useless.  I disconnected the switch and wired the intake runners
back up like they were stock, switching at 5k rpm.

So that solved one problem, but I knew that wasn't it.  It still didn't
feel that much better (torque felt better, but HP just wasn't there).
So I tried what Kojima and a few others had mentioned to me.removing the
knock sensor and tieing it away from the block.  So I unbolted the knock
sensor, ziptied it to the firewall, then grounded it to the block.  Sure
enough, that was the answer!  The car now feels incredibly quick
compared to before.  I am guessing a 15-20 HP increase at the ground.

So now I'm a happy camper.  However, I still am going to wait on
re-dynoing it.  I want to wait until I can replace the faulty RPM
switch, and actually have my intake runners switch at an earlier RPM
(guessing between 3500 and 4000 would be the best).  That way I can
actually tune the runners on the dyno :-)

So just to clarify, the knock sensor was too sensitive, picking up
vibrations from the headers I assume (only new part), and retarding the
timing a lot.  I didn't plug in a scan tool to actually read how much it
was retarded, but I know that unscrewing the knock sensor sure did help!

So thanks to everybody who helped me figure this out, especially Mike.
I LOVE this list!