nckwltn
Explorer
After smoke testing my engine, I found a pretty substantial leak from the front of the lower intake plenum, right where the vacuum actuator turns the rod that all the butterfly valves are attached to. I found that squirting some carb cleaner in the area the smoke came from caused the engine to idle poorly for a moment.
Skip to the next day and I have the plenum pulled the BF valves unscrewed and the rod removed.
The seal at the front was hard and brittle, and broke when I pushed on it.... it makes sense that I was getting p0171 bank 1 too lean, because any air that was getting sucked in was going right into cylinder 1.
I ended up taking an o-ring from O'Reilly, coating it with wheel bearing grease a day using it to seal up the butterfly rod. If I wasn't in California I would have just removed the BF valves and sealed the hole up. The size of the ring was approx 9.5mm ID x 14mm OD x 2.3mm thick.
There is no mention of the rod in the FSM and no parts diagram with part numbers.... telling me that this isn't something you can purchase a replacement for.
I ended up greasing the o-ring because it needed to rotate about 45 degrees when the valve actuates. The valves have a lot more resistance than they did, but still move easily.
I shot a couple of quick videos to give an idea of what the part looks like. In total it took me about 4 hours. Much of that was just removal and reinstall of the plenum.
Need to give it some time to know if this will work long term, but seems to have done the trick to get me past smog.
Other post on this same issue, has good photos of the vacuum leak area. I'm guessing this is going to become a common problem for Gen 3s.
https://www2.pajeroclub.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=54029
Skip to the next day and I have the plenum pulled the BF valves unscrewed and the rod removed.
The seal at the front was hard and brittle, and broke when I pushed on it.... it makes sense that I was getting p0171 bank 1 too lean, because any air that was getting sucked in was going right into cylinder 1.
I ended up taking an o-ring from O'Reilly, coating it with wheel bearing grease a day using it to seal up the butterfly rod. If I wasn't in California I would have just removed the BF valves and sealed the hole up. The size of the ring was approx 9.5mm ID x 14mm OD x 2.3mm thick.
There is no mention of the rod in the FSM and no parts diagram with part numbers.... telling me that this isn't something you can purchase a replacement for.
I ended up greasing the o-ring because it needed to rotate about 45 degrees when the valve actuates. The valves have a lot more resistance than they did, but still move easily.
I shot a couple of quick videos to give an idea of what the part looks like. In total it took me about 4 hours. Much of that was just removal and reinstall of the plenum.
Need to give it some time to know if this will work long term, but seems to have done the trick to get me past smog.
Other post on this same issue, has good photos of the vacuum leak area. I'm guessing this is going to become a common problem for Gen 3s.
https://www2.pajeroclub.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=54029