'95 855 T-5R loss of power, thick exhaust, rough idle, et al

[casual friday]

Tonight during an ill-advised flooring of the accelerator, there were some unpleasant noises, followed by immediate loss of power and a strong smell in the cabin. I was able to make the 10+ mile trip home without any catastrophic failures, but my car was doing some strange things the entire way...

First off, some background on the car: I purchased it just over a year ago from Stu over at Swedespeed. Here is the exact car and everything he did to it:
http://www.swedespeed.com/projects/project_850_t-5r_wagon/index_Project_850_T-5R_Wagon.html

Since owning it, I've replaced a collapsed front engine mount (made a HUGE difference), and added an MSD ignition coil. I've always fed it premium gas, and until now it's been extremely solid for a 16-year-old car with 180,000 miles.

Ok back to my situation... here are some of the symptoms:
-idles around 700rpm (used to be a silky-smooth 900rpm)
-while in drive, engine will not rev past 2000rpm (while in park however, it will rev smoothly past 4k)
-once engine reaches the vicinity of 2000rpm, I hear a faint "wooshing" sound with my windows down. This noise stops once I let off the accelerator.
-thick and smelly exhaust; sound coming out of the muffler is inconsistent and "farty"
-even at consistent accelerator pressure, engine repeatedly surges and ebbs about once a second.
-gas mileage is about half of what it was.
-overall loss of power.

Again, all this occurred after essentially flooring the accelerator from a dead-stop (I admit it, I was being a dumbass). My initial thought was that an air hose of some sort either blew off or ruptured from the high level of boost (if you read Stu's article, a similar thing happened to him after his power modifications -- so the intercooler hoses shouldn't be more than a couple years old...). I did a quick inspection of the engine bay and nothing seems amiss from the topside, but it's dark out and I park on the street, so I couldn't really get a good look.

I have my fingers crossed that since the car still goes forward--albeit slower than anything else on the road--nothing too major/expensive is wrong with it. ...right?

[Ozark Lee]

Welcome to MVS,

From your description it would be my guess that one of your intercooler lines popped off.

...Lee

[casual friday]

Problem solved! It was indeed the intercooler-to-intake manifold hose that came loose. Last night in the dark it looked ok, but today it was easily noticeable. I'm glad that's all it was!

Thanks for the diagnosis!

Is there any kind of special clamp I can get to prevent this from happening again? I tightened the existing clamp as much as I could, but that doesn't exactly give me peace of mind that this won't happen again in the future...

[vjaneczko]

That should do it. If the clamp is old or rusty, it'd be best to replace it.