Most vehicle in its 3nd years and after will have leak somewhere, some are caused by abuse of usage, some are caused by plastic parts worn, and you will realize that your car is not working really good, maybe the engine is a bit more shaking than before, maybe the accelerating is not as good as it used to be, abnormal idle, etc. The turth is:
Leakage in the intake system will affect your vehicle engine performance.
Let's have a look of the graph below to get to know how engine works,
The above picture shows the cylinder working cycle, there are two adjustable factor, which is controlled by ECM,
1. Timing of open and close of valve
The timing of open/close the intake valve and exhaust valve determined how much air shall come into the cylinder, if the intake valve open too early or too late, then the amount of air in the cylinder would be out of the standard; if the exhaust valve open too early, the waste air would be released too soon to be burned totally; if the exhaust valve close too early, the waste air would not be totally exhausted.
2. Timing of ignition
The timing of ignition is of vital importance to make sure the compressed air/fuel mixture to burn at the max compressed state so as to generate max power output.
for most mordern engine, theres two factor are controlled by ECM. ECM will monitor the air tempreture, air flow, intake manifold pressure etc to caculate timing of ignition and valve action. what if the parameter ECM collected are wrong?
Above graph shows the structure of the intake, If the parameter ECM collected are wrong, the calculated output of timing for ignition and value are surely going to be wrong. then the engine will work abnormal. check the graph below,
14 is the intake air quanlity sensor, 16 is the throttle, for example, if there's a leak at position 18, then the actually air pressure would be different to what the ECU get (14), but the ECU will tell the engine to work according to parameter 14. of if there is a leak at 20(intake manifold), which cause the difference of absolute manifold pressure, and the ECU retreive wrong signal, then the ECU actuation signal to ignition and value would not be correct. which causes mulfunction of the engine.
this is how leak at intake affect engine performance.
We know the 3 factors for engine intake system: AIR， FUEL， IGNITION. each has parameters like quantity/amount/duration/timing. and the 3 factors are actually related to each other(we say 'coordinate' or 'cooperate'). and FUEL IGNITION are working at passive mode： Fuel system react according to AIR, and IGNITION react accordig to FUEL and AIR. so the very importance comes at the stability and accurate measurement of air intake. otherwise, the whole system will goes wrong.
With Smoke Automotive Leak Locator, we could fast find the leak, make sure the intake pipeline is perfect sealed, in order to make the engine run at perfect status.
Leslie