Alrighty, I’ve driven the car for a bit and here’s where I’m at. The car idles much better with the MAF plugged in, or unplugged. It’s down on power, but that’s likely because I haven’t properly timed the car yet, I just did it by ear. I’m leaking oil out of the valve covers a bit but that’s likely due to my aluminum valve covers not cooperating with the new studs I installed. New valve covers are coming this weekend. I also haven’t gotten the hpipe to properly seat with the headers yet, so there’s a huge exhaust leak.
I’m beginning to become very stumped on what is causing this running issue, and I believe we can eliminate timing as I ensured that the engine was on TDC by looking at the rocker arms as I was setting it. I also got the rocker arms tightened to spec aswell.
I’m starting to wonder, if this vacuum leak is just the TB, could it be the PCM going out? That, or maybe it does need a tune. Should I look into getting a chip? (I can’t afford a standalone system).
As I said, the idle is pretty good, but it will idle up to 1k, settle down to 600, then after a little bit, idle back up to 1k and repeat. Maybe I need to really take my time going through the idle checklist?