A little background on the car. The motor was rebuilt about 3k miles ago. Since then, it's been tuned, has a power FC, larger secondary injectors. I picked the car up in Houston about 1k miles ago and drove it home and it ran like a champ.



I had a problem with my vacuum lines (2 lines from the wastegate had melted against the turbo). I could only find one 'clean' port coming from the manifold and I assumed that the 2 lines going from the wastegate were teed together and went into that one port. Okay, fixed that and vacuum/boost are rock solid, no erratic boost/vacuum. I took the car for a test drive and it drove fine... idled fine, etc. While sitting at a red light my car developed a hesitation. It would cyclically rev.. it became hard for it to hold idle (whereas before it idled at 900rpm like a champ). I'm noticing black smoke puffing from the tailpipe during this cyclic rev cycle. Please tell me this is not a bad apex seal!! I had the motor compression tested prior to buying it and all the numbers checked out fine.



What are the symptoms of a bad apex seal? I don't hear anything funny coming from the engine, although it is vibrating a fair amount - probably due to the erratic idle.

 

Holy crap, Bobby's the man... vac line to the map sensor came off...

 

heh happens all the time.