I just bought a '97 Eclipse Coupe a couple of days ago. The previous owner had attempted to work up some kind of cold air intake. I'm getting about 10-15mpg on this thing! It's using WAY too much gas. A friend of mine looked at the engine today and noted that it is very likely being caused by this botched intake job...the intake is actually just sucking in hot air from the engine bay, nothing from outside.

As far as other problems with the car...the check engine light is not on, idle is smooth, there doesn't seem to be any problem with acceleration.

I've included four pics below. The one with the arrow points out a valve with no connection that he said is probably the main cause of my low mileage.

Please help me figure out what to do here...instead of wasting a ton of money trying to fix this, I'd rather get it right the first time. Thanks!

Here are some links to even larger versions of the following four pics:

http://www.tccommerce.com/1.jpg
http://www.tccommerce.com/2.jpg
http://www.tccommerce.com/3.jpg
http://www.tccommerce.com/4.jpg






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Well one thing i would suggest to you is resetting the ECU. You can do this by removing the negative battery terminal... and putting the key in the ignition and turning it to the 'on' position to drain any excess power.

If that doesnt work then i would suspect an o2 sensor is to blame.

 

consuming way to much gas can be cause by many problems, usually because of a bad O2 sensor. Get the check engine light read. Most likely it's that. If not. let me know. i'll give you more options


Gus

 

I'll try resetting the ECU here in just a minute.


ComposeEvo,

The check engine light is -not- on. Does this rule out the O2 sensor?

 

No. Sometimes when people sell cars, to get rid of the check engine light they just either pull the bulb or pull the pin on the ECU that triggers it. The only way to be sure is to take it to autozone and get someone to scan it. If it does return any codes... write them down and post them here.

 

unless the diognostic system is failing, or simply the light bulb was removed from the cluster (dirty techinician trick) bad 02 sensors should ALWAYS throw a check engine light.

i cant imagine the car running to rich and not throwing a CEL. try cleaning out the mass air flow sensor. Have you checked your cats, to see if their clogged?

give me some more details on what exactly is happening.

 

Sebba,

I will definitely get this checked, then. If that's what he did, what pisses me off is that the oxygen sensor is a relatively cheap part, even more so for a dealer, and it wouldn't have been much trouble to replace it.

 

Dealers AKA stealerships.... enough said lol. Shady ******.

 

Here's where I reveal my ignorance..I don't know what you mean by cats, and I'm not totally sure where the mass air flow sensor is. I found a picture on google images of a 'Mitsubishi Mass Air Flow Sensor' so I'll look under the hood now.

 

Its the black box that sits in the same pipe that your air filter is connected to. The cat is an abreviation for catylitic converter. Its purpose is to reduce the emissions from your exhaust. Sometimes they get clogged and that can cause problems