I've been slowly building up a 2nd gen 7 to race in IT (should be finished by the time no one uses them anymore). The car has been stripped and put back together with the bare essentials, however I can't get it fire and run properly. I was wondering if you guys could take a few guesses at this. Here are exerpts from another forum that hasn't been much help. If this is out of context for this forum, just delete this thread.

previously.....car would fire for one second and die. turned out i completely missed putting a bolt in two of the omp injector holes on the lower manifold. after taking care of this the car will fire up and idle roughly. however it will only do it with the afm unplugged and the throttle adjustment screw all the way out to acheive a ~500 idle. as soon as the afm is plugged in, the car dies. the idle is pretty rough as well. i checked all the sparkplugs for spark when i couldn't get it to stay running. they are fine. the cas adjusted all the way to one side smooths out the idle. i moved a tooth or so over but it never fully cleared anything up. i'm sort of stuck at this point. it runs smoothest with the timing retarded about 5*. i thought maybe the broken section on the vdi manifold (vdi manifold has now been replaced but with no change) was causing a vacuum leak, but i sprayed starter fluid on the area and didn't get any change in idle. i've sprayed just about everywhere looking for vacuum leaks without having found squat. another note is that the idle speed increases when i pull a vacuum line off.

ok, bought a vacuum gauge. rough idle at 500rpm netted into the needle bouncing from 5-10. holding my foot on the pedal to hold 1k netted in the needle bouncing between 14-15. another note is that the car is half driveable until it warms up. once it warms up, you can't touch the throttle w/o it stumbling and possibly dying. now i've never checked vacuum but i'm guessing the needle shouldn't be bouncing. when i revved the motor cold, the needle would hold solid as i revved up to 20-30 on the gauge.

bought an afm and ecu for 50 bucks. not bad on the price, but didn't make a difference. took the intake off AGAIN. replace any vacuum lines that hadn't been before. checked the caps. put it back on and had the same damn problem. soooo, i plugged up the extra afm to the connector and had mandy hold the plunger in. car fired up and idled same as with it unplugged. as soon as the afm plunger is let out, it dies. i'm replacing the fuel pump this weekend.