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Query of electrical or mechanical faults...



As some of you know, last sundays race ended with my Scirocco running
rather poorly on the last run. (Its all Pauls fault!) I blew the entire
slalom section which should of netted a 68.xxx time. I ended up with a
71.xxx. 
Heres the deal on that, it idles fine, but as soon as the throttle is
cracked, it misfires. (Runs on 3 cylinders.) Anything over 3,000 rpm's it
runs strong. Meanwhile, it sounds like a lawn mower while its missing. 

What I learned:
At the track I removed the spark plugs thinking it has wasted the
electrode on one of them. (it ran exactly like that scenerio) They were
fine although the plugs read a little rich on the fuel mixture. Mike
leaned it out a tad.

I did a fuel injector test when I got up yesterday using Pauls water
bottle with the nipples removed. (Ouch!) Hey, that works pretty damned
good! You get an instant idea as to how all 4 injectors are performing as
well as a visual level of how much fuel is flowing. Anyways, I ran off
battery power and I had 0 fuel from the #1 injector. #2 and #4 flowed
great and had the same amount of fuel and the #3 was about half the flow
of that. 
Then I thought since my battery seems to be en route to a slow painful
death, maybe its low voltage wasn't giving enough juice to run all that's
needed to perform properly. So, I hooked up my battery charger at a 2amp
charge and retested. Everything worked great! All 4 injectors flowed the
same. I installed 4 new o-rings on the injectors and reinstalled them.
I got under the car to take a look at an exhaust leak we heard at the
track and sure enough my downpipe is cracked. Its cracked right at the
weld on the flange that bolts to the manifold on the drivers side
downpipe. No big deal, one of my Honda boy neighbors said he will weld it
for me this weekend. 

Phew.... so, after all of that insight, my question to you guru's is
thus:

Can a dying battery cause the electrical system to not supply enough
power to run the fuel system at peak, causing my latest problems? 
*OR*
Can the crack (which goes 180 degrees around the one downpipe) make that
much of an impact on the way an engine runs?
I recall watching Michael Andretti fall out of a couple races years ago
from a cracked exhaust system. Sure, I know that's an entirely different
engine but can it really have that much of a difference?

Also, I remember somebody saying they had a used header for $50. Anybody
recall who and if he still has it?? I might want to swap it for my stock
system just to see if there is a difference. 
TIA! 


              Shawn Meze
86' Jetta GLi           82' Scirocco GTi
The Fastest, Quickest, Cleanest and
best looking Scirocco in all of San Diego!
http://www2.netcom.com/~trnsfrma/vws.html
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