Hello Scotty,
I have an automatic stock 2007 Pontiac vibe 1.8L engine with 148,000 miles.
The car was running perfectly fine when I bought it a few days ago, but I decided to do some maintenance. I used a blue-driver scanner to check for codes before buying the car and the car did pass smog. I replaced the valve cover gasket, intake gasket, spark plugs, throttle body gasket, cleaned air flow sensor, and clean throttle body with the correct cleaners. I did notice the timing chain has some play in it, but again the car ran fine before these maintenance. When I started the car, it died after a few seconds. A second try resulted in the engine idling rough, the exhaust smells of gasoline, and the spark plugs got coated in soot, but the engine stayed on. I know the engine is running rich, but I don't know why. There is no check engine codes(yet), but I only ran the engine for a minute. I double checked connection and spark plug gaps without finding any errors. Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you Justin for the advice. I found the problem to be the intake gasket shifted during the re-installation. I believe the misaligned gasket created a vacuum leak, hence the symptoms. The problem has been resolved!
Let it run for 10 minutes or so and drive around for a few days. When you changed the spark plugs, cleaned the MAF and throttle plate, you screwed up what the computer had adjusted itself to compensate for. It's trying to run with the carbon and crud that was on the throttle plate and MAF sensor, and old spark plugs. It probably needs to re-learn how to idle. I only did the MAF sensor cleaning and throttle plate cleaning on my '99 Ranger last summer. It took 2 cranks to get it to start. It ran terribly but it fixed itself in a couple days.
