I agree that the exhaust and LICP will get me boost easily 500rpm sooner and the car will rip. That being said, I want to concentrate on my most prominent and annoying symptom, the cold start hesitation.

It is best described as the car acting the way it would with water in the gas, but for about 2 minutes after I leave for work in the morning. Mind you I am not driving the car hard, but when I am trying to drive parking lot speeds the car starts spitting and stuttering, no SES light just a whole lot of jerking. Once the car is warm, it smooths out, makes good power, and doesn't really have any driveability issues.

I know people will tell me " let the car warm up". I never boost the car until I see a quarter of the temp gauge, and the car never started this garbage until the fall. It seems to have gotten progressively worse over time. I am starting to lean toward a fuel pressure problem, but there are issues with that theory.

Things I have tried without success are listed above. I am wondering if the fuel pressure regulator has developed a leak, and is not providing the car with adequate fuel pressure during cold start conditions. However if the FPR was on the way out, I would suspect I would not be getting enough fuel when boosting, and the car seems to run perfect when hot.

When I get a chance I may run some new vacuum line to the FPR and bench test it.

 

Can anyone weight in on the fuel pressure/fuel pressure regulator theory?

 

So I looked at the vacuum line routing, and noticed that when the Hallman was installed they Teed the MBC input line into the BOV reference line. Curious, I looked at the nipple coming out of the turbo and it is blocked off and not used. I am now kind of wondering why they didn't take the boost signal from the turbo, and keep the bov on a dedicated line from the manifold. It is entirely possible that the bov is not venting properly between shifts, and causing my car to feel "boggy", and would totally explain the part throttle fluttering I am getting from time to time that was never there. Time to order up some new silicone lines.

 

I'm not blaming the routing entirely either because I know the setup works fine on alot of cars, but I am suggesting that for some reason I am getting a weak or insufficient vacuum source to the bov. I will play with it and see if it helps.