Restored Power?? Getting Hairy!

Today, Wednesday May 23rd, 2007, seemed like a glorious day for my car because I was getting some much needed belts (timing belts and complementary belts I believe there was 5 in total) replaced according to my mechanic that had been cracked and loosened, until I got the car back $541 later, what made this a real kicker was my mechanic personally test drove some 30 seconds before I arrived and told me "it used to run good, now it runs great".

I hopped in and was off on my merry way down a residential road, on the the corner from the shop when at about 4k in 1st gear I am a victim of a "SHHHHHHZZZZZZZ" obnoxious grinding/vibrating noise that has erected from within the shift knob and surrounding places that are metal without shock absorption, (ie. the footrest for my left foot while driving).

I drove around the block once before taking it back to the shop with a train load of disappointment and prety much freaking out, saying to myself "what the [beep].."

I had both the mechanic and the owner of the shop hop in for a test drive, the mechanic seemed affended and insisted I was not hearing a noise, my shift knob wasnt vibrating and there couldn't possibly be anything wrong. The owner of the gas station/repair shop/land lord of the mechanic wanted to drive the car himself and he said their was an unorthodox vibration and noise but he insisted the car was running mint, but being that he was only flooring it through third gear in a winding road residential area, he said, also it was fine.

But at night, tonight driving highway speed I noticed that my boost was barely exceeding 7 psi on the guage WHEN FLOORED, and barely getting up to 5 psi in normal driving and the sound of the turbo has disappeared completely and I bet my acceleration would keep up with a 125hp civic. Prior to today the stock guage was not afraid to spark up decently over 7 I'd say around 10.

My mechanic said he had to remove a motormount to complete the job, is there a significance in the motormount and decrease in power. I am not going nuts being the daily driver of this car I know that the car is nowhere near the same. If anyone has any ideas any at all I'm begging for help, this is my baby and I'm freaking I can't afford a new car at this time..

Weird times man. Seems like a shit shaddy mechanic to me who wants to avoid law suits and possibly costs in pocket replacements for his fuck up.

If he claimed to remove a motor mount , he may not have supported the motor properly and when it tweaked might have cause a boost leak. I would go around and look for any boost and vacuum leaks before freaking out too much.

Take it to another REPUTABLE shop or dealer (not some fucking gas station) and have them verify all the work done by the grease ball who messed up. If they find he screwed up, take the report to them and start threatening if they don't fix whatever is wrong.

I hope what he meant by the motor mount comment was that he had to remove it to do the work but put it back after. I hope. Completely removing a mount is just stupid. It won't affect performance really, but it can hurt the stability of your engine bay and would cause pretty bad shaking.

BTW, your stock boost gauge is not real accurate anyway.

i understand it isnt accurate but, I use to be able to hear it spooling, now nothing and the rpms move at a snails pace

my boost problem was due to a rotted cotter pin from my wastegate, any solutions to this?

drilled wastegate and new cotter pin, the vibrating was a hole in my exaust near my flex pipe.. muffler tape ;-)

cooking with crisco now, in love once more

pulling harder than ever :-)

Them cotter pins will get u ever time. When i installed my 16G i guess slowboy forgot to bend the cotter pin that went from the actuator arm to the wategate, so it fell out and i was starting to boost around 5k rpm. I think somebody else had that problem too. Glad u found out the problem though.