If you smell it under the hood, makes flex pipe sound suspect. You should be able to hear it if you rev up with the hood up.
Fuel smell or more like solvent?

 

Have you checked fuel pressure under load?

 

Thanks. Attached my mityvac to the purge valve as shown on the attached video and there was not vacuum loss. looks like it checks out.

 

It is at start up. It starts up at first try with no issues whether hot or cold. Will try the full test with load per the attached video to see if it also checks out. Without load, it holds pressure.

Will lift car and look at all the lines but doubt rust cause I live in Cali but never know. Thanks for the tip and location to look.

One thing that I do notice is that upon start up, it revs up like it sucked additional air for a few seconds then idle settles. Suspecting intake leak cause it is starting to act like a Monte Carlo that I used to have that have intake manifold leak. It also shakes when idling as it wants to stall but it does not since I think the ECU is compensating hence why it is running rich.

 

That would be for a P0172 rich code if that were the problem. You have a lean code.

 

You have rich and lean codes both?

 

So, nobody reads. Fuel TRIM system lean not A/F ratio lean.

 

Hello All,

Apologize for not being on. Had a family situation with a risky pregnancy that I needed to switch my attention to. Thankfully, we now have a new healthy baby boy.

Going back to my issue, this morning I hooked up smoke machine through brake booster hose and held it, built up pressure via the intake tube where the air filter is connected but it did not smoke anywhere in the engine bay.

Performed fuel pressure test, connected and just turned key to prime pump, it reached 55 psi, let it stand for 10 mins and it dropped to 52-53 psi, is that normal? I then proceeded to start it up and ran it, held pressure at 60 psi with no issues and when I revved it up it would drop a bit like the video I previously posted. Let it idle and it stayed at 60 psi.

Tried smoke test via muffler to see if it reached but disconnected as soon as it started smoking since the muffler has a few gashes. Will need to replace soon as well.

Seems that I will have to go back to the exhaust flex pipe and look at it more in details and see if there are any loose bolts... it is a 2006 so it might be due for some tightening of some bolts...

 

The smoke test indicated is the EVAP system.
Could be a rusted out EVAP vapor line or fuel line. The usual place for both is under the plastic hold down in front of the driver side rear wheel well.
Fuel pressure should be around 55psi and only loose 1-2 psi for 5 minutes after shut down.

 

Thanks. So there should not be any smoke coming from the intake elbow before the MAF? I had to put a glove on mine like the attached video (play at 2:40) and it was building pressure but there was no smoke anywhere from any seal.

elbow and glove at 2:40