Air Intake Plenum

I just changed out the air intake plenem from the all plastic model to the model with the aluminum crossover. When I examined the old plenum there was considerable oil in it. How does oil enter the plenum?

My real quetion is this. Now my car in sluggish. Initially it would not even idle on it own. Now it will idle, but when gas is applied it is really sluggish, and accelerates erraticly. Ideas on what the culprit may be???

did you by chance get coolant down in the sparkplug holes if you did you may have shorted out some coils. also make sure all the plugs for the coils and injectors are on tight incase you broke some retaining clips.

Thanks for the response. Before assemblying everything, while the plugs were still in in blasted each port with compressed air. I also ran a shop vac over the cylinder heads to clear any debri that may have fallen into the ports on top of them as well.

An observation I made tonight is that the power steering pump seems to loosing fluid rapidly. I topped of the reservoir last night. The car has not been driven, yet today after tinkering I noticed that the reservior is back to the same level as last night. What sypmtoms whould a siezed ps pump give?

Also, tonight I removed the egr valve and cleaned it. Any other idears for me? ANYONE????

insure that there is no air leaks past the m.a.f. sensor. the m.a.f. sensor also needs to sit some what level. if you have a air intake temp sensor on the old tube then make sure that you installed it correctly on the new one

If you look in the troubleshooting portion of your maintenance manual you will see that rough idling and lack of power can be caused by lots of stuff. This makes your problems even more frustrating. Besides air intake and control problems you also need to think about a plugged or weak fuel system.

Did you replace the intake plenum because you thought it would make the idle stronger? If you haven't checked the idle air valve, that's always a good thing to do because they need to be cleaned periodically.

As for the oil in the plenum I'd do some research into EGR and PCV to see if something that is recirculating something to the plenum is depositing oil.

I am new to this forum so maybe I'm missing something, but what year is your car? Have you run a computer diagnostic test?

Mess around with the way you operate your vehicle to try to narrow it down. If you turn the key just before engaging the starter motor you can hear the fuel pump turn on briefly to pressurize the lines. Bring the key forward until you hear this, wait for it to stop, then do it again, if something is messed up with your fuel system this may just give you a different result.

Thanks everybody for you help.

The only sensor that I removed during this process was the engine coolant temp sensor. The fuel system pressuring up is verified when I turn the ignition, the pump engaging is clearly heard.

I am wondering if there is a method to check the COPs. I found nithing in the Haynes manual. As I sit her typing another though just occured. Since the plenum was leaking oil into the air chamber, my plugs may be fouled. I'll pull each plug and inspect. I am happy to say the the oil leaking onto the valve cover has ceased.

I'll come back tonight with an update regarding the condition of the plugs. I still want to know if there is a way to bench test the COPs though.

Thanks again.

if the plugs got fouled you may as well replace them with plat. plugs you will never get them to clean and burn properly. when your at it replace the boots

Not to change the subject, but do the later year CV's have COP's?
My 95 has a coil bank on the front of both heads, but I don't have the COP's.
I have spark plug wires on my car.

CV started COP in 98

I initally has bosch 2 plat. plugs. I have replace all with autolite plat. The store only had 4 bosch plugs for my car.

Now I know have retrieved codes indicating misfire on 3, 5 & 6. The car is running better but is misfiring. I have checked the injector, they all appear to be working. I checked by listining to them via a rubber tube.

I also checked the respective cops with a plug tester. They all emitted a clear bluish spark. At this point I'm afraid I will have to overhaul the fuel rail or maybe despit my effort, the fuel injection ports may be obstructed.

Any other ideas????