Lucky's Series 3

[codge]

The air control valve comes off as well Nik. I think that's what you're looking at on your engine shot. (See the diagrams and write up in the link above. It really is easy for you because you haven't got to wrestle with the thermal reactor on yours. The most difficult thing is usually getting the mixture set up right (other then dead roughly) after removing the old gubbins. But yours must have been done already - 'cos the exhaust is presumably not in 'overrich' mode now for the reactor.

Follow Me?

[Lucky]

Yeah, cheers Dave . I think it's all been re-jetted already. I realised that what I was looking at on mine and what Ian had posted pics of were two different layers in the same general area. Eventually. Sorry, had all my hair cut off (what's left of it) the other day, I think my brain's noticed the chill and gone into hibernation.

So, I do need a blanking kit after all. Are you there, Steve, lol?

[Steve-A]

PM me your address Nik and I'll stick 'em in the post when I get a chance ( probably monday/tuesday)

[ian65]

yeah, the air valve is hidden from view under the plastic tray that forms part of the rats nest..... this is what it looks like when the tray's out of the way.... you need to strip it all off, right back to the manifold and then put the blanking plate on it.



.

[ian65]

Thanks again, but unless I'm being really thick here, isn't that mani bit different to mine? No matter which way up I look at it, it doesn't seem to match up. Sorry to keep on being stupid, but is this blanking plate



The same as the one on mine already?


If so, that hose union from the airpump looks completely different I guess I need to leave this till I have the manfiold off to fix my water leak, anyway, yeah? Is there another connection from the pump other than the two hoses I highlighted earlier that you can't see without stripping everything back? Hopelessly confused now

there's something strange going on here...

this picture is of the air pump piping to the reactor on my silver s3 which is totally original..... on your car Nik, the air pipe leading from the reactor to the air pump valve has been removed and the outlet now only connects to the air filter can....



I haven't seen this before.
As your car is running well and all you want to do is remove the airpump which doesn't run anyway, I'd be tempted to just remove the pump and then link together the airlines that go in and out of the pump... then leave everthing else as it is.

.

[Lucky]

Hahaha, so after all that across two forums and me spending a day being utterly confused my original stupid question was nearest the mark all along? I can just run the hose right from the aircleaner housing straight onto that spigot behind the bottom of the airpump and call it quits?

Damn, I thought FDs were complicated, this FB's twisting my melon

Joking aside, what is this airvalve housing actually doing if the pump doesn't run and nothing's connected? The one the pump actually feeds into I mean, the bit I apparently would need to blank off. Surely so long as it isn't actually open to atmosphere it doesn't matter, it can't do anything, can it?

[Lucky]

Hang on, wait one.

Just re-read what you said there. When you say;

on your car Nik, the air pipe leading from the reactor to the air pump valve has been removed and the outlet now only connects to the air filter can....

Does that refer to this hose here;

(jeez, I'm getting fed up with editing that pic lol). If you do mean that, and that blanking plate, then it's just that; blank. Hard to tell in that pic, but the hose from the aircleaner housing isn't connected to anything, it's just dangling in space


Soooooo, if I'm finally beginning to grasp this, someone's blanked off the air valve gubbins at the first available point rather than bothering to removing it and then blank it at the mani, and they've left the airpump there simply as a really massive and obsolete way of routing a pipe from the aircleaner to the manifold without having to do anything else to it? Is that not utter madness?

[ian65]

looks like it's all obsolete then as you say. The rear blanking point on the manifold , as seen here, just exits air down a pipe to the rear of the car. I reckon yours will already be blanked off in which case, you can either just lose the air pump and blank off the redundant connections to the air filter or remove the air valve and blank it then close the air filter connections.




It looks to me like the previous owner were hedging their bets with this. Back in the day, when the original factory exhaust went, it was around £700 to replace from Mazda so many people stripped it off and put a stainless system on including headers..... losing the air pump and emission crap at the same time. I suppose that if the owner of your car didn't want to commit themselves to remove all that stuff in case the car was ever to be returned to its original condition, it might explain why they left most of it in place...... unless whoever fitted the exhaust just didn't know what they were doing... that might be a more likely explanation.

[TOOL]

I don't understand all this debate over an air pump. It's not connected up (no belt) so it's not draining power. I'd just leave it. It's original. Original holds it's value better.

You won't see any improvement from removing it.

[Lucky]

You raise an interesting point, or points even, Mr Tool. I'll try to satisfy your curiosity, since this seems to trouble you

It's not about the removal or otherwise of an airpump per se, it's about me getting to understand the workings and assembly of the car better. It's also about me getting to know the sort of work and alteration that has been done on it previously. It helps to get into the mindset of a previous mechanic and therefore what standard of maintenance I can expect to have been carried out previously; was he the sort of man who'd leave a redundant airpump on through caution (caution is good, it stops you screwing things up gung-ho) or through ignorance (which is bad, what else was he clueless about?) or even a desire to leave the car original (which is commendable and implies he cared about it...which is also good).

And since originality's been mentioned... you seem to have mistaken me for someone who gives one I don't give flying four-X what the value of the car is, I didn't buy it as an investment or as something to pass on to subsequent generations. I'm not the custodian of a museum piece, I'm the owner of a car that was bought to serve as daily transport. It's a good example, yeah, but it's certainly not perfect, and has already been adulterated from stock. Why then seek to preserve originality that is already compromised? The airpump can carry on being original on a shelf in the garage, but I don't see the point in leaving redundancy in the car. OK, so the weight saving, improvement to airflow and cooling, etc, etc, from removing it is negligible but since all it currently does is plug two holes I think I'll be able to find a more elegant solution to that without it

My apologies if all that sounds confrontational, because it isn't intended to be. I believe forums are a brilliant resource for people like me who (clearly ) aren't blessed with any great mechanical aptitude or engineering skill; so we can learn from the hard-won knowledge and experience of better minds. That's what I'm attempting to do. If you find it odd, tedious or annoying you always have the sanction of not bothering to read it, yeah?