NOW I remember why I wasn't too excited about driving my car again...
When I first got it back on the road, I was having an odd starting problem. I would start fine the first time I keyed up, but if I didn't allow the car enough time to warm up before keying off (say, swapping cars in the driveway) it would be extremely difficult to start the next time. It was so hard to start that if you didn't give it moderate throttle it wouldn't start, and then it still missed and sputtered for at least 15-20 seconds before the car would settle into it's rhythm and idle nicely. So I go in and play around a little with the T-pro, lower my afterstart enrichment a few percent, and all seems well for the next couple weeks.
Last week while driving my car would stall when I came to a stop, no matter what I would do to try and keep it idling. I had no choice but to give it some throttle just to keep it going, otherwise it would drop to about 400rpm, stutter, then die. I gave up on driving it for a little while and went back to the calm and trouble-free Focus for a little while.
The other night I went to start the car just to hear it, let it warm up, etc. and I get the hard start that I had previously, but this time the extra throttle did nothing and it died not to restart. I yank the front 3 plugs to find them soaked in gas. So I let the front 3 dry out, stuck them back in and then played with the tune a little more (now I've got barely any afterstart enrichment - 1%), start it up, and let it cough/sputter since the rear 3 didn't get dried and I didn't clean the plugs that well, and after a couple seconds it once again fell into it's standard idle and seemed well.
So for the hell of it I pull the T-Pro out of it's hiding place and get a reading off my wideband. My idle was surging from 12.0-17.0 over and over. I then find that my idle Part-Throttle tracking (wideband tune and tracking basically) didn't have the right input for idle TPS (I had mistakenly put .060V instead of .600V). So I fix that, tell it to idle at 13.8-14.0, and let the T-Pro do it's thing. It doesn't. My idle now sits rock solid at 12.0 - no fluctuation at all. It would be nice if it did that just a *little* higher (like where I fucking told it to would be nice). I'm going to manually remove fuel in the 400-1200rpm range tomorrow to see if I'm beyond the scope of what the tracker can adjust for, but that is only one of the pieces to this puzzle.
I take the car out on to 8 mile (yeah, that 8 mile) and give it a little push in 3rd. I didn't wind the gear out since the speed limit on that stretch is only 45, and I'm not found of going over double the speed limit. Taking up to about 80mph, I see the AFR never get above 10.5, and sometimes dipping into the 9's.
So now I need to take my laptop along to work one day soon so I can have Jeff pilot my car and I do some on-the-fly tuning. This seems easy enough, except my alignment is so far out of whack that my car tries to change lanes as soon as you floor it. I tried to have an alignment done last year before the trans nuked itself, but the shop I took it to said they weren't able to get the rear alignment bolts to break loose so now I need to replace those before I can get my car to drive straight....
All this, and the car will be put back in hibernation in 12 weeks. No matter, I still enjoy it.
CLIFF NOTES: My car is running like a steaming pile of dog shit. I need lots of tuning, money to repair alignment parts, and only have 12 weeks before I put the car away for winter. I still enjoy it.
It is going to be a real pain to figure out how it managed to break itself during that time. I feel your pain, although it has been alot longer for you.
