Did some work this afternoon. But don't fully know results yet. I took off the top of the air filter box, and found a plastic push pin floating around in there, figured out where it went and reinserted. Man that clip under the MAFS is in an awkward spot, and was even harder to get back on eventually. While that was off, I also took the other end off at the throttle body to get ready for the smoke test. Since I had that off I used the PCV breather hose that is connected near there to insert the smoke. I put a rubber glove over the TB to block that off and then got the smoke machine going. This took some time, since I think I didn't have a great power connection at first, but eventually got it going. The rubber glove started filing up soon after. It eventually popped off before I spotted any smoke. I put it back on, and kept looking. I eventually found a small amount coming out the top of the dipstick. When I pushed it back down fully, it popped off the glove again. I think I will run the test again, with the air intake pipe connected and using kitchen wrap over the air filter, just to make sure that there is not a leek anywhere on the pipe, and that I didn't miss it elsewhere.

The weather isn't great here, so I didn't go for a drive yet, we will see what happens.

I also did some unrelated work, I cleaned the front speed sensors since I've been having an intermittent warning on them. And while I had the car jacked up a bit to do that, I took a look at the transmission cover. I had planned on replacing the filter and ATF at some time, but after the first long drive I had yesterday, I think that should be moved up. This was the first drive over 30 minutes I've done in the car, probably close to 1.5 hours. The car had run well, even though I still had high fuel trims, but as I got on the highway near home, I got a transmission warnings and it only wanted to stay in one gear, I got home like this. Code was P0735 , gear 5 incorrect ratio. Made sure I could still get into park and reverse. Shut off the motor, and started it up again, and it would shift like normal, went for a short drive just to confirm, but it went through the gears just fine. But this coupled with the hard shift into reverse makes me think it's time for the transmission filter and fill. Oh, I did check all four wheels for bearing play, and there was absolutely none, if I got any of them to shift more then a millimeter or two I'd be surprised they were rock solid top to bottom. So I think I will have to order those parts. Looking underneath I think that is possibly the original pan, and the car has almost 90K on it.

Tomorrow will probably be rear wheel sensors, fuel filter, order stuff for the transmission, and maybe a test drive if the weather improves.

 

Have a look at the fuel pressure sensor at the end of the fuel rail. The sensor has a vacuum line connected directly to the throttle body. GREAT pace to inject smoke. The idea of a smoke test is to find leaks as they exist, so the less you disturb stuff already in place, the better.

Best of luck, keep us posted.