I can't remember which one is which, but my car seems to be dumping too much fuel into the engine. It idles at about 600 rpms. I have a full polished stainless steel cat back exhaust, and a carbonio carbon fiber cold air intake. You can smell the gas when its running. Any ideas what might be wrong, and or how to fix it? Thanks everyone :)
If your car is dumping too much fuel in that means its running rich. With the intake and exhaust I would think that you would be using less gas. Are all of your o2 sensors in good shape? If one of those is out that can lead to poor fuel economy. I only ask because sensors are a royal pain in the arse about going out and not sending a code on a lot of cars, or not flashing a consistant code.
If you had not been in there changing the air intake and had left everything just as VW put it when it left the factory, there probably would not be a problem. For more than a hundred thousand miles. But is it coincidence that after you were in there changing stuff the engine mixture went crazy? I don't think so.
So....
Sounds like you may have: disconnected or not reconnected or damaged a connector to your: throttle body, mass airflow sensor, temperature sending unit etc. Check all connectors and wires. Also check all hoses to ensure they are connected proprely. A rich/lean condition is generally caused by your ecu getting no or improper signals from sensors or a vacuum line problem related to fuel delivery system i.e. pressure regulator valve or sensor.
If you 'eliminated' any hoses deemed as uh... unecessary or unusable with the new intake you have compromised the integrity of the engine's control and management system.
Your O2 sensors are probably the last thing wrong unless you damaged the wires and or connectors to them.
You need to search ebay for a code reader and buy a simple manual like a Haynes manual to translate codes. The readers on ebay usually will spell out the code problem in plain english.
"Cold Air" intakes.... somebody is making a ton of money on these things and I'd like to be standing near the dynos when they are gathering their data on HP increases. We placed digital temp probes in a 2003 Jetta GLi stock intake runner runner and then installed a "cold air" intake system. The "cold air" system was actually scavenging more under hood heat than the stock intake and any gains are most likely attributable to the big K&N style filter. The possibility of water ingestion is increased BIG TIME by these "cold air" intake set ups as well. put everything on the intake back the way VW engineers had it (they design stuff for a reason... it's their job and they know your VW better than some geek in China selling blue annodized tubes) and buy a K&N flat panel filter for the stock filter box.
Bottom line....
Leave stuff alone unless you are a proffessional tuner and you have changed cams and rods in a specific engine a few hundred times. Your GTi will live a long long life without stuff stuck into it that VW for some reason decided it did not need. Fast is fast and if you want insane fast save your $ and buy a Porsche or an M3.
I'm a technical writer for a German manufacturer so I tend to get pretty descriptive, so sorry if I dumped a lot here... Just hope you get it sorted out.
If the fuel mangement sytem is dumping a lot of fuel into the cylinders you are effectively washing the oil off of the cylinder walls and rings and piston skirts. That will seize the engine or as I like to describe it: "Cause catastrophic failure".
Don't drive it until you get things straightened ou!!!!!!!!!!!
I have a 2001 VW 1.8t and my exhaust has the same smell that you decsribed. People told me that the rich smell was normal in a turbo, but now I have a lot of problems starting it up. When I turn the key, if I don't start it on the first try, it will take forever to crank up. After that the RPMs hit 3000 sometimes and stay for a minute or two. Sometimes the RPMs jump up and down and stall my engine out. All of these problems have black smoke coming out of my tailpipe when I'm experiencing them. Does anyone have an idea??????????? (everything has been tuned-up: sparkplugs, fuel filter, oil, coil-packs, air filter)
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