Unsticking IMRC's by hand?

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Kraze

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Well, my car threw a p1519 code the other day, which is a IMRC stuck closed on bank 2. I tried seafoaming it then going out to the highway and hammering on it for a while to see if that worked, but nope. I cleared the codes and it just came back.

What I was wondering first off is which side is bank 2? lol I'm guessing it's the passenger side just by observing the IMRC cables when I give it some dry revs to activate them. The passenger side cable doesn't seem to jump as much, but knowing for sure which side bank 2 is would be nice.

Secondly, I've heard of people saying they stuck their hand back behind there and manually moved the IMRC levers, and I was wondering if anyone has any tips for doing this? I see where both the IMRC cables go to, but it looks like it would be damn near impossible to get a hand back there. The car is a 97. Has anyone here done this before? Or done any other methods besides seafoam to free them?
 
It's not easy if you have bigger hands but you can get them back there and move them back and forth...

I would try this, Seafoam the car when it is stone cold, just fire it up and suck the Seafoam in and then let it sit for a long time... maybe an hour. Hopefully the Seafoam will sit in the intake and loosen thing up, if you do it hot the Seafoam will probably just evaporate.

Other things to consider... if you can watch and see that both are opening but you still get the code there is a chance that the Pot inside the controller failed but the motor is still working.

I wold Seafoam it again, it can't hurt only help.
 
+1 for what KustomizingKid said.

Sometimes the IMRC controller "reports" a stuck IMRC when it's just the controller that is malfunctioning.

It is very difficult to get a "real sized man hand" down in there... if your a GIRLY MAN it's fairly easy...haha

I wedged my forearm behind the passenger head and acrossed to the drivers side.. it was a tight fit but I could reach both controller cables.
 
Well here's something that might help us figure things out. I did some datalogging today and I logged the IMRC position counts. Bank 1 seems to be working fine. It will stay up at 1023 until you get the rpm's above 3200, then it drops down to around 200. Bank 2, however, hovers around 365 under 3200 rpm's, then only drops to around 330 once the IMRC's should be opening up.

After I seafoamed the car yesterday, I could see the drivers side IMRC lever snapping open like I imagine it should though. What's going on here? I'm still going to try wedging my hand back there to manually manipulate both levers just to make sure they move easily, but maybe it's a problem in the obd II sensors and not the actual IMRC's?
 
What exactly is the "pot"? Is it something I need to worry about? Or as long as the IMRC's are still functioning right can I just forget about it?
 
I always knew the engine bay would be a good place to hide the drugs. lol

Ok that makes sense though. If that is indeed the problem, can I just ignore it? Or would that need to be fixed?
 
Replacing the controller is the only real fix... I don't know anyone who can rebuild them personally... I would just yank out the CEL bulb personally.
 
mine was doing this after a BG chemical intake cleaner, i would see them move but it kept tripping the damn light. i ended up pulling the intake and cleaning the imrcs by hand (fun) and so far so good
 
So would the potentiometer going bad be a probable cause of the DTC and the weird datalog? Will it effect the IMRC operation at all? I can live with the code being there if that's all it is. The CEL isn't even on so I won't have to worry about that bugging me lol.
 
Kraze said:
So would the potentiometer going bad be a probable cause of the DTC and the weird datalog? Will it effect the IMRC operation at all? I can live with the code being there if that's all it is. The CEL isn't even on so I won't have to worry about that bugging me lol.
Click to expand...

I noticed the same goofy stuff in my datalog which made it difficult to tell if I had a problem or if the controller was doing "stupid stuff".

One would act how I presume it should be, and the other would have all kinds of goofy data.

With that said.. it shouldn't affect normal operation.
It will effect how the PCM controls the engine tho

There is a spark adder for IMRC's that wont get added if the controller doesnt report correctly...and of course the CEL Code itself will pop up after a certain number of times the IMRC reports being stuck.

Both of the above issues can be accounted for with a tune.

You can set the counter to trip the CEL Code at a higher level which will make the light come on alot less and the spark issue can also be addressed in the tune fairly simply.
 
Kraze, what are you datalogging with?
if your using a SCT Xcal.. post your datalog file .csv file
I would like to take a peek at it.
 
Yup.. that's what mine looks like.. one looks fine.. one look st00pid.

Doesn't look like you made it to WOT tho,....or your load is very low for a WOT run?
 
Nope, never made it to WOT. It was raining and I had just got the Xcal to work with the vista laptop, so I was just testing everything out. But this weekend I plan on doing a couple WOT datalogs, I'll post those up too once I do them.

So has it pretty much been decided that if I can manually move the IMRC's and see that they're not sticking to just ignore the code?
 
Also.. looking at your log, at timestamp 177.152

looks like your motor "knocked" because the knock sensor pulled timing

might want to drop a degree out at load range .42 at 3500 RPM's..

It's only pulling 1 degree, but if you take that degree out your car will make more power with a degree less of timing than it will when the motor knocks and the KS pulls timing.

Just a heads up
 
Lol if you think that's bad, wait til you see a WOT data log of my car. You mind if I shoot you a pm once I have the new WOT datalogs this weekend and we can go over them and maybe do some comparison? I'm pretty sure you're far ahead of me when it comes to understanding the data logs and tuning aspects of these cars lol.

And here's an old data log with some WOT runs on it for you to look at if you want: http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=7fe10a379214d0c18ef1259ff1b60e81e04e75f6e8ebb871
 
World of Warcraft?? huh

Kraze... I need to log my car, before I parked it I could actually get it to knock by matting the throttle.... wish I had some logs...
 
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