After another run through the FAQ's something else caught my eye. While my car wasn't blowing black smoke it was indeed running very rich. I had poor acceleration (among other things). I go over my turbo hoses and connections every so often but always wondered what a good method of checking for leaks would be.

I took the hose off of the top of the turbo and inserted a master cylinder cap that I have altered for bleeding my brakes. It has a schrader valve in it and I attach a bicycle pump to bleed my brakes. The diameter was nearly the same as the turbo hose and I clamped it in place. I reduced my output on the air compressor to about 15 psi and put the air chuck to the valve. I immediately heard a leak on the output side of the intercooler. The short hose between the intercooler and the pipe had a hole in it on the side hidden from view. I made a quick patch out of some aluminum flashing and that solved the problem.

As I mentioned before this is my wife's daily driver and she is more of a cruise control person while I am more into boost. Over time the performance had gone down due to the hole increasing in size gradually, but it went unnoticed by her until it started the hesitation/idle problem.

Randy