One of the first things you need to have before you even consider an ‘exotic’ car is someone who works with cars for a living. You can certainly pay for someone but it is really gold if you have one as a friend. I am lucky to have just such a friend in ‘J’.
So J comes round and we change over the thermocouple which was relatively straight forward. We then turn our attention to examining the issues with the exhaust by pass valve which have been detailed previously. J is able to test that the actuator arm operates freely. He is then able to check the diaphragm inside the valve is working by sucking on the hose to the valve and see the actuator operate. So it seems all good back to the solenoids in the lower right of the car.
I then notice the small pipe just below the by pass valve that was hidden by the heat shield as shown above. This pipe runs along the bodywork to the right and ends near whether the thermocouple connects to the ECU and just above the solenoids that control the vacuum.
However, this end of the pipe, as shown above appears to be damaged in such a way that you can’t connect the rubber hose to it. Ah ha. Now I understand why there was rubber pipe running directly from the solenoids in the lower right of the car to the exhaust bypass valve. Now I understand why this rubber pipe is actually composed of two rubber pipes joined together. Clearly, as the default metal pipe on the bodywork has been damaged, they had joined the two previous pieces (the short piece from the valve to start of the metal pipe (first image above) and the longer piece from the end of the pipe to solenoid (second image above) together to bypass the valve together. Ah ha.
Given that the metal tube is unusable, it would seem we connect the rubber tube directly up from the solenoids to the exhaust bypass valve as it had actually been disconnected from when the car was purchased and merely flopping around the engine bay.
When J was connecting everything back up he noticed that the solenoid with blue connector (shown above on right) was actually connected to the left hand side. Examining the connection closer he discovered that there was a blue marking on the right hand connector. His feeling is that is a factory designation to indicate the blue connector goes on the side with the blues marking. Makes sense to me. Perhaps this has been the whole issue with the exhaust bypass valve? Someone had previously connected it up incorrectly? Hmmm…I’ll have to do some more research here as it seems like everything with the exhaust valve is in fact good and the problems lies with the vacuum process as these connectors.
As we started to reassemble the car J also noticed that a number of nuts where missing like the one from the middle of the above image. His comment is that ‘someone was having a good go’ on the right hand side of the car given all the things over time and what we discovered today. Interesting.
The replaced thermocouple (above) looks like the replacement so it would seem to be genuine. There is no obvious fault but it is clearly quite ‘aged’ and one would have to assume was the original that came with car.
The prayers to ‘Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration’ appear to have not been in vain as the car went for a blast down the the freeway and back without the dreaded ‘1-4 Slow Down’ warning appearing. This has happened before so we won’t claim victory just yet but it is certainly looking good. A huge amount of thanks to J giving up some time and spotting the problems.
Time for more research on the vacuum solenoids.
Love the F355 