Well my engine is definetly gone.. 0 compression in front rotor.. so just for fun and a last glimer of hope I did the atf trick.. let it sit for 24 hours and last night I took it out for a drive.. It brought a tiny bit of power back but it is very clear that there is no hope for that front rotor..
Anyways, when I got back from my little drive I glanced under the car and my 2 pre-cats were glowing red.. I also noticed if you sit and idle for a minute a buzzer starts going off.. I think it may be the exhaust overheat and the light just doesn't work.
Question is should they be red like that.. is it normal for only runing on one rotor..
By the way, it is a stock 87 n/a.. the only thing not stock is after the pre-cats the cat is gone and it is just a custom exhaust, Y pipe into 2 mufflers.

 

First off, I assume you did a compression test and discovered the lack of compression.

A blown rotor should have the opposite effect - too much fuel. I've seen the cats glow red with fouled leading plugs that made the car run on the trailings before.

If your exhaust overheat warning light came on, you're the FIRST I've ever seen that thing work for. My old roomate's 87 NA had BADLY fouled leadings that weren't firing at all, and it was running just on trailings (if you could call it running . After just a short drive, the car looked like it had red neon underneath - the cat was BRIGHT red, glowing like you wouldn't believe, waves of heat coming from under the car. Exhaust overheat light did nothing.

Also, I don't *think* the overheat light is tied into the buzzer - just coolant and oil levels. I'm not 100% sure on that, though, seeing as how the thing never does anything .

Dale

 

Overheat light is tied to a sensor on the floorbaord under the pass. seat. Bad rotor=>dump unburned fuel on hot cat= RED cat. John

 

The light never came on... it was only a buzzer or warning beeping noise that came on.. I assumed that is was part of the overheat and that the light was just out.

Actually I did a poor mans compression test.. I pulled a plug on the rear rotor and had someone turn it over.. It made good steady swoooshhh swoooshhh swooooshh and if i put my thimb over the hole it was very strong.. on the front rotor I did the same thing.. but no swoosh sound and when I put my thumb there it barely pushed any air..
The pugs looked somewhat fouled... would that cause the red cats??

 

ahh, that makes alitle more sense.. thanks

 

Actually your cats always get red at what degree you can see it is different did you see this like the actual piping was red or the cats inside the piping was red because my firend had an mx6 and we used to do some spirited driving on a road and after 2-3 runs we could see his cat glowing red but that was because he had no other piping after the cat.... so they always glow red but it shouldnt be to the point that the whole piping and everything is red that is bad