Had a few hours last night after putting the kids to bed, so decided to at least get the swirl flap motor installed……..those clips are fragile, and I am talking about the new ones. Finally got it in, but didn’t seem right. Driver side flaps were open and passenger side flaps were closed and motor itself didn’t look like it was sitting correctly. Went back and looked at the pictures I took on removal and they were no help as I remember one of the old clips fell apart and the motor came right out. Last thing I want to do is getting everything put back together and have to go almost all the way back in because of this.
Called it a night and went inside and ended up going down the rabbit hole of YouTube videos regarding the swirl flap motor. Most of which were about the resistor trick. My intakes aren’t to gunked up, so really no need for this bypass, or so I thought. Did find a neat trick on how to install manifolds and swirl flap motor as one however.
Got up today and decided to remove manifolds and swirl flap motor to give me more room to get motor in correctly. Used “handle” trick from YouTube and pulled manifolds out. Got last swirlflap clip in. My problem again, is that the only way the motor goes back in is with the driver manifold flaps open and the passenger manifold flaps are closed. Pretty sure they both need to be OPEN or both CLOSED.
Is this correct? Doesn’t make sense if one is open and one is closed, and if I reinstall this way, surely would throw a code and go into limp mode.
I played with the arms and finally was able to get both sides of the flaps in the open position and went to bolt the swirl flap motor down. Then - POP - lower plastic tab of swirl motor broke, then while trying to carefully move swirl motor I heard the top tab crack and break. These are the tabs that bolt into the manifold to secure swirl flap motor. In picture below, you can see the lower broken, the top one I just put back in place but you can see where it is broken.
Below pic is of handle trick I did to remove manifolds.
Here are my options as I see them:
1. Secure intake flaps in the open position and do the resistor trick to fool computer. I know this may adversely effect fuel mileage a little and allow more exhaust to come out of the rear. I can live with that.
2. Buy a new swirl flap motor - don’t really want to drop a few more hundred dollars on a new motor because of damaging the housing. Aside from the money, I will have to wait several more days which keeps the car off the road. Going on 2 months since it has been driven.
3. Try and JB Weld the motor and secure it best as possible. This is most likely not going to be the route I choose as I am sure my repair will break in the very near future and I will be right back where I am now.
Any thoughts, insight, tips, brands of bourbon, etc are welcome and needed.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone as well!!!