I have a 96 camaro v6 5speed.. its the 3.8, it has a gutted cat and a glasspack muffler, i just installed a cai and now i notice its running weird, kinda seems like it idles different sometimes, and also for some reason the clutch feels different, i let off the clutch like i used to and the car stalls, like i have to give it more throttle than before to take off from a stop. has anyone else noticed this? is it normal? also recently within the last couple weeks since its gotten cold ( i live in mn, and its winter) the car starts right away in the morning after being parked all night, but then usually stalls out right away, the rpm just drops and it cuts off, sometimes it only does in once, but today it did it 3 times before it stayed running.. ive never had a car do this before, could it be the cold and maybe the gas freezing up a little? or maf sensor?

 

that intake looks to restrictive to me. what kind is it?

 

restrictive? why do you say that? but its just a cheaper one i ordered from n-take auto design off ebay, i needed a new filter and decided to buy this over the stock, but its deffinetly breathing better than it did before. 1. the old filter was pretty bad 2. its a straight through design and bigger than the inlet on the stock intake box, it goes down to the bottom of the car right above the splash gaurd

 

could be maf or tps, maybe try scanning for codes and see if theres something there.

 

alright well i'll try to figure it out, one more thing though, it has a gutted cat, i dont know if this could cause this, but ive noticed it seems to smoke alot out of the exaust when idling. the day i bought the car my dad was driving behind me on the way home and said he thought he could see a small poof of smoke when i got on the throttle or shifted, but the coolant and oil is fine, well ive noticed it kind of smells like oil after sitting outside and warming up, and the other day i was with a buddy we were letting our cars warm up while standing next to them, well he made a comment about how much it was smoking, his car didnt have any, is this most likely a bad piston ring?

 

If you have noticed it since the CAI install, I'm wondering if the air/fuel ratio is off, based on your "smoke" comment. If the smoke is black, it's a fuel/air ratio issue, might need a tune(?).

If it's blue smoke, it might be a ring or valve guide issue.

 

make sure your intake bolts are tight. i had a simlar issue and the intake was so lose it was sucking oil in from the motor. other than that i would say worn/bad valve guides or piston rings would cause smoking and oil smell.

 

Bad piston rings smoke all the time, bad valve guides smoke at startup and high rpm only. Btw that intake looks very restrictive...what intake do you have on there, O'reilly special for a Cobalt? The factory intake should go out the side and pull in similar temperature air.

The intake piping is much smaller than the TB inlet, just judging by the silicone coupler, so it is not pulling the correct amount of air into the motor.

Also, I doubt the car needs a tune from an aftermarket intake going on. Yes, it couldn't hurt, but unless you're running a larger TB and IM the tune wouldn't serve much of a point (given the A/F ratio is at its factory marks still).