I have been pulling my hair out on my daughters CX-7.
It will not idle to save itself, but seems to run decent once you get above 2000 rpm.
I pulled the intercooler off, and it started idling nearly perfect, but once I put the intercooler back on, it dies.
I looked inside, and it was filthy, and assumed that the passage ways were clogged.
I took the vacuum valve off, that is near the hose connecting to the throttle body, and cleaned the inside pretty good.
I put the intercooler back on, and the engine idled fairly decent, until I put my hand over the opening where the vacuum valve had been.
To me, it acts like there is either too much air coming out of the turbocharger, or not enough going into the throttle body.
Is it possible that something has failed on the turbo?
I'm at my wits end with this car, and hoping someone here has had this problem, and knows the fix without doing a bunch of guessing.
Thanks so much for your help.

 

Wondering how this worked out? We can hear a hissing noise and have a rough idle. But when we pull the intercooler the car runs smooth. Not sure how to progress.

 

were you ever able to resolve this mine just started with the same issue

 

Turned out there were two problems. The first is that under the sensor right on top there is a small o ring. If you pulled that sensor you may have lost the small o ring. That was the first. The second is that there is a small vacuum line that goes to the large turbo charge hose. The small tube that the vacuum line connects to had gotten pushed into the big tube. Simple pulled it back out a little with needle nose and then reconnected. Those two stopped the hissing and solved part of the problem. Unfortunately, when these cars start throwing those variable timing codes it is the nature of these engines aging. They start to loose oil pressure leading into the small pathways that feed the oil to the VVT. Ended up scrapping this car after changing everything from the timing belt, head gaskets, VVT filter and VVT valve, etc. Now encountered this same issue with Hondas, toyotas as well as the Mazda. These modern engines are designed with too much need for very narrow operating specs and as the gunk builds up, things wear, etc, they almost become obsolete.