Service Engine Soon...did I destroy it?
 

Good afternoon ladies and gents,

I am requesting the help of the 370z Guru's. I received a service engine soon light 300 miles ago. I called Nissan and they said it was most likely the gas cap not tightened. They said problem should go away in a hundred miles. Due to this I ignored the situation. I just had the genius idea of looking under the hood and one of the intake tubes from my stillen Gen 3 came loose from the hose right next to the motor. Therefore my engine has been sucking in air without the filter for the past 300 miles.

How much have I damaged my engine?

What should I do to fix this problem? I already tightened all of the tubes.


Should I reset the ECU to see if the error goes away?

Thanks so much,
Justin

If you need any additional details please let me know.

*The car did vibrate rough in idle a few times. It felt like my RSX when I had motor mounts installed.

the code was probably due to the car drawing in unmetered air. So reattach the tubes, reset the ECU and see if it comes back. Its doubtful anything significant got into the enigne.

Thats what I thought, I'll change the oil tomorrow. I don't understand how the things slid out, they were tight!

Depends. Just because you're on clamps on those tubes doesn't mean they're completely secured if not done properly. Also, we all like to assume we did the installation correctly, but even mechanic installations could make mistakes and overlook some things here and there when using aftermarket parts.

These things just "pop out" on things such as dips. When Nissan test their OEM parts, they make sure their car went through these bumps and hoping as minimal damage as possible.

I did hit a few rough roads which could have forced them to dislodge, lesson learned. I should have went with my gut feeling and not called Nissan. I would have figured this out without driving 300 miles damaging the car.

Honestly, the code was probably thrown as the MAF sensor was giving a false reading, due to the tube not being connected. If this sensor reads incorrect the computer will feed the wrong amount of fuel for the air that is incoming, causing a rough running engine. It is very unlikely that anything harmful happened to anything. The engine bays on these cars are sealed quite well. So unless you went "four wheeling", I highly doubt anything significant got in there. Just reconnect the tube and reset the ECU and all should be fine. Shouldn't be any damage.

as far as what you sucked up.... just look around your engine bay. is it clean? if so then no worries.

Reset ecu and let car run for 15 minutes, no issues. Engine bay is fairly clean, just a couple of dead raccoons on the radiator.

^^^yes

you can always get an UOA to see if there are any damage indicators in the report.

The oil doesn't go past the piston ring. The air you suck in goes from the throttle body, to the intake manifold, to the top of the block where it mixes with fuel and ignites. You won't see any indication of damage in the oil (unless you blew out a piston/ring which you would def know).

No worries I'm sure you are fine... 300mi isn't really that much to have a small air leak.

300 miles WITHOUT an air filter on one side? Most likely the side of the engine that is fed by that tube has major scoring on the cylinder walls. That will cause that side of the engine to produce less power. That will cause the car to want to veer to the weak side when under acceleration and will wear out the other side of the engine from having to do more work to deliver all your horse ponies.


Nice work.

150% not true... almost anything other than very large debris would be vaporized and he had an air leak from a loose hose, not a missing filter.

Don't go posting things that you have no knowledge on. Additionally a car wouldn't "veer" to one side... there is only one crank, one flywheel, one transmission... even if the power was unequal substantially, the car wouldn't pull to one side. Again unless you know what you are talking about don't go jumping down someone's throat with your negative comments.

You never laughed at the Wile-E-Coyote cartoons did ya?

Sure I did... THEY were funny.