Lean idle but rich everything else question

[Turbo6Smackdown]

As you all know by now, I have a few problems I'm chasing with this car. The two biggest ones, that I'm now starting to think aren't related, are a lean idle, and a super rich everything else. My idle's like low 14's (afr) but it loves a high 12 idle. It idles almost like a stocker at that AFR. As far as everything else, I'm shooting for the quintessential 10.8 AFR. At present I'm runnin' a stock maf, tt 91 street chip and powerlogger just for diagnostic purposes. I normally run a TT or Bailey alky chip with plastic LS1 maf & gen 2 translator. When I removed all the fancy stuff my idle really got a lot better. A little lean without the translator's abilty to add fuel but none the less a ton better. Odd...

As far as the idle there's nothing left for me to do to change that. I hear the idle fuel's in the chip and that's that, but I could certain pull fuel in WOT, but for me personally, having to pull like 8% or more in wot fuel tells me that there's a problem, not a chip burn mistake. I'm not comfortable with say a 9% fuel pull band-aid on my shit. That doesn't let me sleep at night.

Do you guys think this lean idle/rich everything else is related? Or two separate and distinct situations. Could a bad O2 sensor cause both? I always thought the O2 sensor was for like light cruise and light cruise only, where idle & wot is chip controlled. So to my mind the O2 can't be the culprit for a one single cause of both issues.

 

[forcefed3.8's]

The first thing I would change would be the O2 and check for vacuum leaks. When are you targeting 10.8? That is a WOT@ full boost number not low boost of part throttle. You are having a lot of problems. I dont think it is possible to have this many problems. I think you are misinterpreting some things and making mistakes. You need to take the car to someone who knows these cars, trust their opinion, let them fix it, pay them what they need to make it right, and leave it alone after you get it back.

 

[Turbo6Smackdown]

1. Was planning on changing the O2 sensor anyhow, even though there's only like 600 miles on it. Knowing my luck, it's still good.
2. There is noone around that has the time to fix this. I'm on my own & that's the reality of it. That's ok, I can learn a lot doing this.
3. This is an old car with a lot of problems, that a few hacks worked on a few years ago. Over the past year or so, I've corrected most of the gremlins caused by them. You'd be amazed. Even though it's a nice looking car, it's come a LONG way in the last 3 years. LOTS of little loose ends that had to be tied up. Most of them are done. I'm very sure one of the problems is a vac leak from a hard part, like the dog house, or an intake manifold, or throttle shaft seal. I'm going to borrow a "leak checker" from my engine instructor and pressurize the system to find it out.

I know it doesn't look like it, but I already know the answer to about 90% of the questions I ask here, and to my instructors. What I'm doing is getting 2nd & 3rd opinions on my assessments. I do this because some times I've been led astray. It's actually kept me from going in the wrong direction more than a few times. You'd be suprised by the amount of bad information there is out there, even by some experts. After I've received a few data points on one topic, I can better pinpoint the direction to go in. I'm not only trying to fix this, but to learn as I go, and if I go too fast, I won't learn as thoroughly as I'd like to. This way it sticks in my head forever. I just go about it in a more tedious fashion than most. Most others want it fixed and fixed now. Set it and forget it. And in 3 weeks they've no clue what happened and why back then. Not me. A long, arduous, and tedious diagnosis doesn't intimidate me. It's daunting for sure, but not intimidating. I'm not beyond learning this stuff. I just take things slow. Painfully slow for some. I apologize if that's the case.