Im looking at a car that was in a small collision that did only exterior damage. After the collision, it threw a CEL and the following happened to the airbox.

The piping from the intake box cracked where it connects to the throttle body, leaving about a 1/4 gap halfway around free to suck air straight into the throttle body. When you slightly throttle up from idle, it will choke and die at low rpms. Could that extra air dumping in throw off the MAP enough to kill the engine and throw the CEL? It idles fine, and will run when throttled more aggressively and kept in mid to high rpms.

 

I went to look at the car again today and I believe I will be coming home with her tomorrow.



I patched the cracked intake with some duct tape to see if the engine responded. This did improve the choking and dying, at least enough to convince me to drive it about 1 mile to the nearest Advanced Auto. It was still a little spotty around the 500-1500 RPM range as before, but quickly tightened up beyond that on the road. On the return trip from AutoZone it almost died at idle a couple times.

Advanced reported the following CEL codes.

P0410 - Air Pump Circuit Malfunction
P0108 - Manifold Absolute Pressure Circuit High Input

Any input moving forward with the purchase? I still think its worth the 2500 doll hairs he is asking.