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General >> Problems >> Vacuum Leak! (nowt 2 do with dysons or vegtables)
(Message started by: Tamworth_Mafia on Dec 16th, 2004, 2:21am)

Title: Vacuum Leak! (nowt 2 do with dysons or vegtables)
Post by Tamworth_Mafia on Dec 16th, 2004, 2:21am
Good morning fellow scorpio drivers, i wonder if some of you fine gentlemen could share a little experience of your exquisit vehicular contraptions, with particular interest in the 24v Ultima variant.  

I instructed my mechanic to inspect the vacuum system as i noticed a 10 second hissing upon turning off the engine, and he has confirmed that there is a leak somewhere underneath the intake manifold.  

I have noticed that this site documents the regular failure of a 'T piece' found in this approximate location.  

Now the question I have is; is it necessary to dismantle the entire intake system and throttle jazz to replace this faulty pipe or is there a smart way of doing it?  

Also what costs are likely to be envolved?  

And realistically, can i hope to solve my less than smooth autobox and intermittently jagged power steering operation by repairing the vacuum system?  

When turning the wheel at a stand still the engine revs dip until turning is ceased.  Also a vague judder is evident but this might be related to the lack of power available to the pump i suppose.

Any useful advice greatfully recieved.

Kind Regards,
Mike.



Title: Re: Vacuum Leak! (nowt 2 do with dysons or vegtabl
Post by colinw on Dec 16th, 2004, 6:47am
Not sure wether the steering is associated with the vacuum problem  but the t peice is fairly easy and cheap to do ,if you can get the bits ,my local dealer could not supply them ,so i purchased some T-pieces from a motor factors and adapted them with new pipe cost about £8.oo ,there are 2 off these one is a reducing T this is the difficult bit as i had to put a reducer on by gluing on a straight connector i then wrapped all of it up with self almalagating tape and all is well ,i beleive somebody on thios site has found a supplir of the originals but not sure of availability or cost ,the only thing you should need to remove is the black cosworth cover  

Title: Re: Vacuum Leak! (nowt 2 do with dysons or vegtabl
Post by Tamworth_Mafia on Dec 16th, 2004, 2:05pm
Thankyou Colin, most useful advice, i am much appreciative.  

Can anyone offer any words of wisdom about my autobox or juddery power steering?  

Thanks again colin,  

Mike.

Title: Re: Vacuum Leak! (nowt 2 do with dysons or vegtabl
Post by Dave on Dec 19th, 2004, 1:35pm
Hi there both.

I have discovered I have an air leak too, it sounds to be coming from here:

http://tinypic.com/xsx94

It's very audible and when I switch the engine off it carries on for about three seconds.

The engine's smoothness is not affected but the acceleration is now comparable to the family's 60bhp Punto.

If it is the T-piece, could you tell me more about it, the exact location for example, as I took the cosworth cover off and found nothing. I'm clueless...

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Many thanks
D

Title: Re: Vacuum Leak! (nowt 2 do with dysons or vegtabl
Post by Tamworth_Mafia on Dec 19th, 2004, 4:31pm
Hi Dave.    This post seems to have been largely ignored so i suppose that leaves me thee and colin to sort it.  

down the side of the engine there appears to be a lot of vacuum related pipery going all over the shop.  potentially any one of those hoses cud be damaged i suppose.  most notably, two of the hoses meet at a small coke can sort of size canister on the o/s wing area
with three prongs on.  the hoses go into a rubber bung type affair and then into this can.  on mine. the rubber bung had slipped almost completely off one of the prongs,  and while im not 100% sure what the thing does, i know that that cant be good. so altho it sounds like a pooty answer, the answer is your going to have to thoroughly search the network of hoses until u find it.  Recommend u use a tube held to your ear as a method of listening to a specific locality in the engine bay.  

i did consider driving my cossie into  a lake and make a note of where the bubbles were coming up i was so frustrated tother day... until  i remembered "ah its a vacuum leak, there wud be no bubbles!" d**n!  (gets out hair dryer lol.    ;D :-[

Title: Re: Vacuum Leak! (nowt 2 do with dysons or vegtabl
Post by Dave on Dec 19th, 2004, 6:14pm
Hi Mike

(Dave's brother here by the way)

Many thanks for your reply! I wish I had seen it before messing about in the dark this afternoon  ::)

Anyway - you were spot on about the coke can thing. The pipes were hanging off and had disappeared out of sight so at first glance I couldn't see anything wrong apart from the most amazing hissing sound!  A bit of detective work with the inspection lamp found the pipes and the coke can! Luckily, the pipes and connectors seem to be in good condition so just pushing it back on should be the end of it - haven't road tested yet.

Regarding the T piece connector, I had the Cosworth cover off today and didn't see it. I will have another look tomorrow though.
Also - we had some work done recently which required the whole intake manifold gubbins to be removed. When replaced, the old gaskets were used causing an air leak, this made the engine hesitate and hunt and the autobox changed badly - it was really quite jerky at times so it may possibly be the cause of your 'box problems! New gaskets fitted and it is much better - could do with a gearbox oil and filter change though - not looking forward to that  >:(

By the way - all gaskets and O rings on the intake manifold/throttle body system were about £15 from our local Ford dealer, worth a go maybe?

Power steering wise - from memory our revs go up when the wheel is turned when stationary as it requires power from the engine. Ours judders occasionally too, not sure why though. It had a replacement "steering box" just before we bought it at a cost of £1800!!
Additionally, David has mentioned that because your car is a 1995 model (true?) it may not have benefited from a modification to the power steering rack (in 1996). The bearings on earlier ones go wrong and cause a juddery/rough feel when manoeuvering. Ford may recommend a full rack replacement but the bearings can be changed separately.

Thanks again for the advice  :)

Ben and Dave

Title: Re: Vacuum Leak! (nowt 2 do with dysons or vegtabl
Post by Tamworth_Mafia on Dec 19th, 2004, 6:32pm
nice 1 mate!

Take your point about intake leaks, not something thats easy to investigate tho is it.  its sort of good to know that it cured your lumpy gearbox tho.  might get that looked at by a garage maybe.  £15 eh thts less than i was anticipating.  i was figuring nearer a £100.

glad what i wrote turned out to be right, even if it was too late. sorry  ;D  

please let me know if the hissing stops or handling improves as a result.  im intrigued to know if something like tht is causing my less than expected engine response.  

tht frigging T piece!!  jeeze where the hell is it??!  is it like the bermuda triangle or area 51???! lol  


erm no mines a 96 N.  so theoretically safe there *crosses fingers*  
My thinking was, and id value ur opinion on this, if theres a intake/vacuum leak then perhaps thats causing a weak idle (ie less spare torque at idle) and so the pump is taxing the engine more.   becos it is possible to stall the engine if ur braking and turning sharpley at v low speeds.  most infuriating!! especially when i forget to reselect "P" on the trans and it wont restart at all cos of the engine inhibit!! AAARGGGH!! give me back my manual 306 dturbo!! lol  

Cheers Ben nice to meet you.  Send my regards to Dave.

Title: Re: Vacuum Leak! (nowt 2 do with dysons or vegtabl
Post by Dave on Dec 19th, 2004, 6:55pm
Hey Mike!

Nice to meet you too!  :)

You are right about that T piece. In truth I was about to give up on the air leak - glad I found it though. Your reply was well in time, I just forgot to check the board again! Thanks again for that, good to know I was looking in the right area. It can be too easy to come in saying "oh yeah Dave, your cars fine pal, 2 minute job that chief" then it is no better when he gets in it the next day  :-[ They are complicated beasts!!

Will definitely let you know about the hissing noise - will road test tomorrow.

Re the air leak/power steering pump thing, I can only go off our experiences - when we had the air leak it didn't run well. The box changed roughly, kickdown was unresponsive and the "go" was restricted. We parked it up and next morning it wouldn't even idle without dying until it was warm and even then was very unstable. In short, the idle was, on our car at least, greatly affected. So your problems may well be due an air leak.

Just popped into my head - yesterday we were showing the Scorp to a mate of mine - started it up, fine, gave it a little rev (about 2000rpm) and it fell back to about 400-500rpm before recovering to about 750-800rpm. At that point the lights dimmed so all was clearly not well.

My girlfriend's mum has a 306, only a 1.4 petrol, but nice car! You are best off with a Scorp though mate, hang in there  ;D

Cheers

Title: Re: Vacuum Leak! (nowt 2 do with dysons or vegtabl
Post by Tamworth_Mafia on Dec 19th, 2004, 7:01pm
sounds like the best plan of attack is to firstly cure the leaking vacuum pipe underneath the inlet manifolds, which will necessitate taking them off so while thats being done new gaskets /orings can be fitted and hopefully that will cure the lot.  *fingers crossed*  :P

yeah do let me know how u get on, sorry if i dont reply quickly, but this forum malarky is a bit of a faff at times and not as easy to check as an email  ;D

take care m8 .  


Title: Re: Vacuum Leak! (nowt 2 do with dysons or vegtabl
Post by Mmonster on Dec 19th, 2004, 7:21pm
Hi,

I had a "nice" vacuumleak problem in a summer.  ;D
It was so nice that local dealer can´t find it. They focused to the MAF.. (even once they claim that the MAF was dirty.... and cleaned it... without noticed that they haved changed it to new one week before.. I really haved a long laugh when they try to invoice me.  ;D )

So in the end i take the tools and do it myself.
Gaskets and 2 O-rings are really cheap and should be changed every time.
The T-Pieces(2) are under centre part of inlet manifold. You can´t find them if you dont know exactly where they are.
You can see and reach them if you remove the left manifold(viewing from front).
I changed the T-Pieces and hoses to nylon ones. Rubber hose only in connections like all(moust) other vacuumpipes seems to be in the vehicle.
(i remove all 3 parts of inlet manifold to be sure there is not any leaking gaskets etc..)
It take about 3.5h and everything was up and tidy again. (if i have to do it again, i think it can be done less that 2hours) Well, that dosen´t fix the leak, so i continue next day.

Next i took a hand operated vacuum pump with gauge, and check all vacuum pipework by connecting that to every pipe connected to manifold. (you can use a (clean)rubber hose and suck it by your mouth)
.. and i found it..   :)  The leak was in electronic controlled valve in EGR circuit, black thing mounted on the inner wing near the exhaust manifold.
(pretty mutch there where red arrow is pointing on Daves picture earlier on this topic.)
Get new one from local dealer and shmoohly she runs.
(yes, i visit the garage and told that they should purchase a pump, or even 50cm hose to have better customer service   ;D  )

I hope my experiment helps.
Cheers,
Mmonster

Title: Re: Vacuum Leak! (nowt 2 do with dysons or vegtabl
Post by Tamworth_Mafia on Dec 19th, 2004, 7:28pm
Thanks MMonster,  valuable advice.  I will use some of those techniques to try and find it.  

Thanks mate.  :D :D

Title: Re: Vacuum Leak! (nowt 2 do with dysons or vegtabl
Post by Mmonster on Dec 19th, 2004, 7:52pm
Hi Tamworth_Mafia,

No problem.
I left the fact out that replacing leaking valve did not sort out my problem totally. There was some hesitating stll in the engine. There was dead Lambda sensor as well propably killed by lean mixture. Oh, yeah.. the cat was half way down to the pipe too.. So in the end it was not cheap..
BUT: When i changed the cat, i removed the whole exhaust to clean it from pieces of broken cat, i test the car with only first parts of exhausts (cats)  ;D  It really sound nice over 3500revs.   ;D  
(my hobby garage is in industrial area where nobody is living)

Mmonster

Title: Re: Vacuum Leak! (nowt 2 do with dysons or vegtabl
Post by Dave on Dec 20th, 2004, 11:05am
Hi All,

slight update and word of caution - when cleaning the maf be prepared to change the air filter and the small breather (?) filter in the corner of the air box. Ours clearly hasn't been done for years and was in an awful state! Dave has just gone to get a new lock set from Fords that we ordered last week, with further instructions to get the filters so I can re-fit the whole lot. Just letting my hands warm up now! The maf was pretty dirty but is looking better now. Will let you know how/if it drives afterwards  ;D

Cheers

Ben

Title: Re: Vacuum Leak! (nowt 2 do with dysons or vegtabl
Post by Snoopy on Dec 20th, 2004, 11:15am
there are a couple of tricks you can try to find air air leak ( vacum)   get a gas lighter an do not light it.... hold it around where the leak is IF  it sucks in then the engine revs will rise... Its trick you can try......... the other way is to buy a can of the deisel start (Ether) and spray that around the area of the leak.. but be warned use in a well ventilated area..... it can be very explosive..... and is heavier that air so sinks

Title: Re: Vacuum Leak! (nowt 2 do with dysons or vegtabl
Post by Dave on Dec 20th, 2004, 1:14pm
...I'm reminded of the episode of Only Fools And Horses when Del and Rodney dress up as Batman and Robin and breakdown on the way to the 'fancy dress'.. and Del ignites his lighter near the fuel line. Funny.

Genious tricks, Snoop. I'll remember those for the future.. I never realised how bad air leaks could be before owning the Scorpio. Thank you.

And yes.. the new lock set is here. Things are being processed.

Dave

PS sorry I thought your car was a 95, Mike.. I have terrible memory. And yes... there's a thread somewhere, steering wheel judder is nearly always all about the bearings according to it. They can be replaced at a fraction of the cost of a new rack, obviously. Where is that thread, now....

Title: Re: Vacuum Leak! (nowt 2 do with dysons or vegtabl
Post by Tamworth_Mafia on Dec 20th, 2004, 2:26pm
oh right dave  :D  well if you manage to sniff out an inexpensive solution il give that a whirl if the vacuum fix doesnt work.  

worth mentioning tho, my latest discovery, that the PS only gets juddery when the rpm drops below about 1200rpm.  so when ur braking to a stop, coasting for a long time, or at stand still idle.

must get on with that vac leak   ::)

see ya soon

Title: Re: Vacuum Leak! (nowt 2 do with dysons or vegtabl
Post by Dave on Dec 20th, 2004, 4:07pm
Hi Mike and all

(Ben here - must get a separate user name!)

Had another look for the T pieces today but fear Monster is right and you may have to remove at least part of the inlet manifold to get the things!

Today I cleaned the MAF - it was filthy and still isn't really clean as I didn't want to drown the thing with carb cleaner, but apart from anything else the kickdown is better on the gearbox - it was getting quite reluctant but now will drop a cog or two at the first time of asking. Sweet.

Also changed the air filter - old one was revolting - just waiting for a new crankcase system filter thingy.

Last thing, I reconnected the 2 pipes (that meet at the connector) to the coke can thing (which has 3 prongs) and the car wouldn't idle. Disconnected it again, started up, reconnected, drove about 5 miles before stopping for petrol and then it started up and ran fine! Wierd!!

Question is this - which of the three prongs of the coke can  ;) should have pipes on them, and so which should have nothing on? Or am I missing another pipe?  >:(

If someone could have a quick look at their coke can (black cylinder almost below the coolant reservoir) I would be much obliged.

Cheers to all and best wishes for Christmas!

Ben (and Dave)  ;D

Title: Re: Vacuum Leak! (nowt 2 do with dysons or vegtabl
Post by Tamworth_Mafia on Dec 20th, 2004, 5:17pm
ben...

the coke can thingy (im sure ford will be only to happy with us renaming everything in the engine bay to woman speak  ;D :-*  )  lol

the TWO REAR-MOST prongs are the ones u want on the can.  

the low front prong is blanked off and so you would get no air flow thro that!  erm i think the orientation of the two tubes on the other two prongs is obvious from the direction the pipes come in isnt it *tries to remember*, and im not sure it makes a huge difference any way cos that just looks to be a reservoir type affair.  

but no, it stands to reason that if ud connected it to the front prong u wud have got sod all out of the beast.

hope this helps m8y.

cheers mike.

Title: Re: Vacuum Leak! (nowt 2 do with dysons or vegtabl
Post by Tamworth_Mafia on Dec 20th, 2004, 6:25pm
youve just inspired me to go and have a poke around the engine ben  :D  

i removed the cosworth cover and got me torch out, clambered all over the front of the car and looked down past the intake pipes at near enough every angle possible until  :o :o :o  suprise suprise there was the offending article.  The "T" peice, or the "vacuum vent" as it should be called on mine, completely sheared in half and producing a consistent hiss when i started it up. i was going to try and cover the exposed hole with my finger while it was running but after sizzling the back of my hand a couple of times i gave up  ::)  so it looks as if Mmonster is spot on, and a total dismantley of at least the o/s of the intake is in order.


Title: Re: Vacuum Leak! (nowt 2 do with dysons or vegtabl
Post by Dave on Dec 21st, 2004, 9:34am
Mike - you are a gentleman - thanks for the help with the coke can. I must find out what its real name actually is!!!  ;D

I THINK I had it connected correctly when the car wouldn't start so for the moment am assuming (hoping) that it just needed to 're-learn' itself so to speak. David used it last night and I think it was ok for him so fingers crossed.


I am still not sure where the t piece is - but if you do need to take the inlet manifold(s) off at least you can pop on some new gaskets. If you do it yourself, just put all the bits on the floor together and a) don't do it on a steep hill (still haven't found a socket bar I lost on girlfriend's drive) and b) banish all cats from the immediate area as they like to "help"  ;) - sure I am preaching to the converted  :)

Thanks again for the help mate

Ben

Title: Re: Vacuum Leak! (nowt 2 do with dysons or vegtabl
Post by Mmonster on Dec 21st, 2004, 7:28pm
Hi fellows,

One more thing came up in my mind from last summer.
When i was replacing the T-Pieces and pipework around them: I add longer pipes than originals, so if they ever broke again it's not needed to remove inlet manifolds to reach these litlle things again...   ;)

Regards,
Mmonster

Title: Re: Vacuum Leak! (nowt 2 do with dysons or vegtabl
Post by Tamworth_Mafia on Dec 21st, 2004, 7:37pm
Ben,

yeah nice 1.   i probly wont get rnd to the T peices til after christmas now dammit lol  
but you shall be the first to know how it went if i do  ;D

cheers m8, Mike



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