S2000 Under The Hood S2000 Technical and Mechanical discussions.

Is the Air Pump really useless/not needed?

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Old 10-21-2011, 06:03 AM
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vbb
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Default Is the Air Pump really useless/not needed?

I've done some research, and what I've gathered is that the secondary air pump is an emissions-only piece of equipment that is not really needed for operation of the car, and its whole purpose is to inject air into the catalytic converter at start up until it gets to operating temperature to lean out the Air/Fuel mixture. Most of the information came from this thread: CEL410

But how useless is it really? I've got a test pipe and a wideband, and I'm running a Greddy turbo system with emanage ultimate. I'm getting the p410 cel telling me my secondary air pump is bad, but I'm also getting correspondingly low AFRs at startup. Seems to me the two things are related. Now I know from talking to a few emanage tuning experts on here that my overly rich mixture at startup idle can be largely corrected by open loop tuning (LTFT, STFT, blah, blah) and the conclusion is that I'll probably need to get my system retuned again. My AFRs are good everywhere else (14.7 cruise, 11.5-12 WOT, 14.5ish at partial throttle, etc), but cold idle I'm way down in the 11s until it gradually increases to mid 13s. The 13s at idle are a function of my tune, but couldn't the fact that I'm seeing 11s at startup and cold idle be related to the p410, or otherwise air pump failure?

I'm asking because I'm not going to run out and replace the part if it is going to make no functional difference on my AFRs. I'd rather spend that cash on getting another tune.
Old 10-21-2011, 08:46 AM
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How about you get an izze racing air pump delete kit?

I have one FS with a block off plate. PM me.

Sent using free Tapatalk - Android FTW
Old 10-21-2011, 09:13 AM
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being a little rich at cold start up is normal

11's is a little too rich.. but i'd say 13's cold start up is ok.

I don't have an air pump in my car and i idle at around 13.0-13.5 on cold start.

i'd say you should adjust your tune and forget about the pump.
Old 10-21-2011, 09:23 AM
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Originally Posted by DFWs2k
How about you get an izze racing air pump delete kit?

I have one FS with a block off plate. PM me.

Sent using free Tapatalk - Android FTW
Never even heard of such a thing, but I'm interested in hearing more. I don't want to throw money at this if it isn't something that will fix my issue though. What's the delete kit supposed to do (besides the obvious of deleting the air pump)?
Old 10-21-2011, 09:31 AM
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Originally Posted by sunman
being a little rich at cold start up is normal

11's is a little too rich.. but i'd say 13's cold start up is ok.

I don't have an air pump in my car and i idle at around 13.0-13.5 on cold start.

i'd say you should adjust your tune and forget about the pump.
I had a pretty detailed conversation with my tuner about this and from that, and what I've read on this site and elsewhere, I understand that the idle at cold start is always going to be rich(er) and why. But like you said, 11s seems too rich, even if it is only for the first few minutes until the car gets to operating temps. My tuner seems to believe that it's okay as long as I'm getting up into the mid 13s once the car warms up, but there are a lot of people on here that seem to think differently.

I'm definitely going to get my open loop AFR's tweaked by a different tuner, and I'm also thinking that switching out to ID injectors (and tossing these RCs) will help as well. I don't want to get retuned until I get the new injectors though, so in the meantime I was just thinking that maybe my p410 code was somehow related to my cold idle AFRs and if I fixed the air pump issue, I could lean out my cold idle.
Old 10-21-2011, 01:52 PM
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Originally Posted by vbb
Originally Posted by DFWs2k' timestamp='1319215569' post='21090135
How about you get an izze racing air pump delete kit?

I have one FS with a block off plate. PM me.

Sent using free Tapatalk - Android FTW
Never even heard of such a thing, but I'm interested in hearing more. I don't want to throw money at this if it isn't something that will fix my issue though. What's the delete kit supposed to do (besides the obvious of deleting the air pump)?
It allows you to run the OEM ecu and remove the air pump without throwing the codes that would normally show up when you remove the air pump. In your case, you could hook up the bypass kit, ensure that your code goes away, and then remove all the extraneous stuff that is now unnecessary.

Worst case scenario, you hook up the kit (which costs less than a used air pump), CEL still shows up, you remove (unclip wires) and resell.
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