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or about a year, my car’s engine has been running worse and worse. Cold starts, warm starts, hot starts . . . all became progressively harder. Engine idle degraded to the point where I had to dance on the pedals to keep the car from stalling. Less obvious was the lack of full-throttle punch.
One well-known weak point of my car is the “Michelin Man”-shaped rubber hose that conveys pressurized air from the body-mounted intercooler to the engine’s throttle body. It’s about 2 inches inside diameter, is mounted directly above the turbocharger, and its underside splits open after a few years of use. This is the first component that I check when a similar car exhibits drivability problems. Knowing this weakness, about 2 years ago I preemptively wrapped my engine’s “Michelin Man” hose in half-inch thick foil-covered heat insulation, secured by ty-raps.
Last weekend, after spending an entire day tearing apart the fuel-injection system and finding no problems, I finally thought, “I’m sure that the Michelin Man hose is fine, since it’s protected from heat, but I’ll just check, since I’ve run out of ideas.” Sure enough: the hose’s bottom was ripped wide open! It was the last thing that I checked, and it should have been the first thing I checked. D’oh!
The moral
When troubleshooting a system, Don’t assume anything. The universe has been teaching me this lesson for many decades. I must be a slow learner.
