Basically I was driving home and didn't even get a mile when my car just lost power and died. I tried to start it, and it kinda sounded like a boxer engine. Pushed it off to the side, checked the spark plugs and wires (changed out the plugs a few days before) and checked all the IC pipe connections. Started it back up and it seemed fine for a second and then went back to the **** sounding idle. Decided to try and limp it home, but it ended up dying right after I got out of the my main gate at work (7 miles away). Pulled the plugs again, all 4 plugs were black and two looked like this:



I checked my adjustable gears thinkin' that maybe a bolt came loose and the timing was way off, but everything looks fine. I'm pretty much out of ideas.

 

why does that like it's been blown up with jagged edges?

what do you have on your car?

 

I have no idea why it looks the way it does. I drove the car really easy when I was driving from work. I stayed off the boost the whole time and the car ran perfectly fine on the way to work that morning.

Mods:
HKS 272s
Full TBE
Harman Motive tuned UTEC
SMC Alky injection
AMS crank pulley
GFB BOV

 

confusing

 

How was the timing "way off"? Who installed the cam gears and timing belt? Did you properly tension the timing belt? It sounds like your timing belt may have jumped a few teeth.

 

The car sounds like a boxer!? Thats no good. Looks like your plugs are detonated. If you know how do a compression check just for piece of mind. I am mistified why they would blow like that unless you gaped the plugs wrong.Good luck

 

You can hope and pray that a new set of plugs fix it. From the looks of things you have some major issues. It is hard to tell whether or not that is slightly melted from either a mechanical failure or a tuning error or if something got into one of the cylinders and got smashed around. A part will many times go from one cylinder to another (as impossible as that is going to sound to some of you).

Good luck,

David Buschur
www.buschurracing.com

 

Unfortunately, when I pulled the plugs on the side of the road.. I threw in an old set of NGKs that I had in the trunk and it pretty much ran the same except that I could hear a ping or ticking sound.

The timing wasn't off, I was just thinking as a possibility that one of my adjustible cam gear adjustment bolts came loose and adjusted itself to a different setting.. which was not the case. The car has been in it's current setup for a month or two now, and it's been running good up until now.

Perhaps this could be enough motivation for a 2.3L stroker or 2.4 swap.

 

If you are interested in having a stroker done for the car shoot me an e-mail or give us a call I'll try and help you out on price and such since I am sure this wasn't a "planned" upgrade.

David Buschur
www.buschurracing.com

 

That sucks my man. They are hard to tell whether it was a part hitting them or just melted. The wierd thing is it looks like a pretty new plug. It doesnt even have the heat marks doing down the threads like a normal one should. Are they brand new plugs that did this?

It doesnt seem that the plug came into contact too much with anything (Like a piston) otherwise it would have squished the two contact points together. It more looks like it either melted in a very strange way or something small was bouncing around in there. Sorry to hear that happened to ya Hopefully David will get ya fixed up nicely and back on the road with a better motor anyways . Always look at the bright side... when something breaks you get to replace it with better parts.

 

Do you have a Walbro and/or injectors? Do you have a tuner for the Utec. If so, have you been logging anything lately? If you do not have injectors and a fuel pump, I suspect that you may have exceeded the fuel need during high boost runs which caused a very lean condition and started to melt things. I know that you were not on boost when this happened but the damage may have already been done and a piston finally gave out. I hope this is not the case but please provide more details.

 

David,

What about the crank pulley? I know that you never recommend those. Any potential problem there?

 

Crank pulley didn't cause that problem. Either something was dropped in a cylinder by mistake or something broke.

David Buschur
www.buschurracing.com

 

Thanks David, I'll shoot you guys an email sometime today or tomorrow.

I have OE pump and injectors with no UTEC tuner. Everything has been running good since my tune, I didn't bother logging at all.

The plugs were in fact brand new (one step colder iridiums), only installed them a few days before this happened. I don't think anything fell in while I work swapping them out, the only small parts that could were the bolts for the spark plug cover.. but all of those were accounted for.

A big thanks to everyone for the help.

 

Do a compression test.

If that is normal, drain your oil into a very clean pan and check for metal shavings. Inspect your oil filter carefully as well.