Ah ok, that explains it.

 

bump for help?

what could cause one clean cylinder, and what symptoms should I look for to verify the cause?

 

When coolant enters the combustion chamber and "sort of" steam cleans your piston. Blown head gasket is usally the cause.

Look for low coolant...and a clean piston.

Small leaks you might not see any vapor coming from the tail pipe.

 

this is what I've heard, and I topped off my coolant, and have been watching it for almost 2 weeks now with no change that I can see in the level.

also, if it were a head gasket leak, would I be seeing oil in the coolant, and coolant temps spike on data logs?

 

the usual symptoms of a lifted head i see are 1)car doesn't run very good, i.e. idle problems, knock etc. but the biggest most obvious symptom is when you shut the car off you can hear the coolant boiling. i've never been able to see the temp gauge spike because its a heavily damped gauge (you have to be seriously low on coolant for that thing to move a millimeter). if your overflow overflows thats the most obvious sign of a lifted head. but yours could be a very small problem and not getting to that point yet.

 

Take your car to a smog shop or a shop that can pick up hydrocarbons and have them draw up the air above the coolant reservoir and radiator cap.

That 1 clean cylinder indicates a compromised head gasket to me.

 

on the data logs the coolant temp stayed pretty much the same throughout the runs, and on every run. I'm going to check the coolant level again after work, but the level doesn't seem to be changing and I haven't seen any evidence of overflow yet.

oh, and I pm'ed you back earlier.

 

How much is a new knock sensor? At your mileage with knock issues I would have eliminated that right away.

 

New sensor is ~90$. I replaced mine per my tuner's recommendation when I was getting 20+ counts of knock even while cruising and all knock went away!

 

that is the next thing to get replaced. i'm waiting on my tactrix cable to come in so I can replace that, and try race gas to see if the knock goes away. there's a couple other things i want to try, but have no way to tell if they are working until my damn cable gets here

 

Hmmm, so no real resolution yet? I am still waiting to see some logs my friend

To answer question about heat shield for intake kits, nothing other than the AEM comes to mind right now.

aaron

 

I posted the ones I have on the first page. I'm still waiting on my tactrix cable so I can get some new ones. The guys who recently tuned my car were supposed to send me the logs of the car before and after the tune so I could look at them, but they still haven't. as soon as they send those, i'll be able to post so you can see what the car was doing.

 

I will look again

 

okay, I just checked my oil level, and it's fine. there's also no evidence of water in the oil. the coolant level is exactly where I put it almost two weeks ago. there was no spiking of coolant temps in any of the logs I still have, so I'm starting to rule out the head gasket.

I'm going to do another compression check before I go to work today to check that again...

what else could clean a cylinder like that?

 

Going lean, but the plug would show obvious signs of high temp.