So I pulled my car out of the garage to warm it up. I let it idle for about 1 minute at around 1100rpm's or so. I go back inside to do a couple things before taking off (it's still warming up). When I go out there several minutes later, it's dead... So, slightly confused, I get back in and fire it up. It shoots up to 2k rpms and then starts coughing, so I give it some gas and it sounded kind of weird (uh oh) like muffled, coughing, just weird. So I let it die, pop the hood and check it out. It looks the same as it did yesterday night before I tucked it in. All the visible vac. lines are in place, everything's connected (except I took off my airpump belt, because the airpump was making alot of heinous 'pssh-ing' noises. So I decide to drive it, just in case it somehow got terribly flooded..? (or something). So it actually had normal-ish power, I had to keep it above 1500 or it would want to die. I drove it around my block and pulled it back into my garage as it died. I gave it a compression test and got kind of low numbers on the front rotor . It was like 75ish (hard to really tell), but it almost looked like there was one bounce that wanted to go lower. The rear was a solid 90psi.

What do you guys think/suggest I do in this situation. I had re-used my 140k mi. Turbo side seals, rotor housings and rotors. But I expected to at least get a couple years of fun out of this motor. What do you guys think might've happened? Side seal, apex seal, corner seal?

One important thing, are my internal motor parts still good after 800 mi.? Like if I decided to get new rotor housings, could I swap my fresh Atkins parts in?

Thanks guys

 

well it only has 800 miles on it, it still has time to break in. so i would let it get broken in and see how it goes from there.

 

Vacume leak?

 

Maybe try reconnecting the airpump belt?

 

hey, erik during the rebuild did u measure the side seal/corner seals to see if they were still in spec.. most likley they are i tore apart a na with 146k miles and spec is .268-.274 and the seals were like .269-.270... so im assuming thouse are fine..

p.s i shipped the tail lights to you today ill send u a pm with the details

 

capn: I forgot to mention that I did a comp. test yesterday and got #'s right around 90psi for the front and the rear. Now the front seems to be about 15psi less, and maybe more on one of the faces, if I were able to see the one 'suspect' bounce clearer. Wheras the rear remains at 90psi.

Spyder: This would seem like the obvious answer, but I've been doing a lot of work on my car lately, and have had to deal with several vaccum leaks and this didn't sound (or act) the same as the vaccum leaks. Another thing to remember is that when I left the car to go back inside it was idleing just fine at 1100rpms. An existing vaccum leak would've prevented this. Also, I don't think that there's enough boost/vaccum at idle to blow a hose off it's nipple.

Tyreburna: The car ran and drove fine all of yesterday with the airpump disconnected. If anyone thinks this could be doing anything I'll go ahead and put the belt back on. Just to note; everything is in place, untouched, I just removed the belt to kill the strange pshh-pshh-pshh-pshh noise the pump was making. And since the pump is only there for emission puposes, it's not like it's a necessary part to the car.

The low compression is tripping me out. Shouldn't my car run OK at least, with the 75-90 compression? (unless one of the pulses is in fact REALLY low, I just can't see it).

Just in case: If I were to buy really nice housings (or new housings), could I re-use all of my new seals? Should I buy new side-seals and rotors too?

 

Well the best way if u were to yank it apart as far as the side seals, and corner seals the best way to check if they in spec is to use a dial verner or micromereter to measure them...

i know the spec for corner seals is .268-.274... ill look up the side seals for ya and post

 

Airpump? Do you still have your cats? Sounds like you have a collapsed cat if you still have them. You shouldn't disconect the airpump if the cats are still in place. In fact the strange should the sirpump was making may be in relation to the collapsed cat hypothesis. Try removing the cat and starting it up.

 

I agree. If the cats are there, put the pump back on.

Don't jump right into tearing the block down to check seal clearance. Solve the other problems first, like the vacuum leaks.

Speaking of which, a vacuum leak will cause the idle to be higher than normal. Say, 1100 instead of 750. Vacuum is suction. If you have a suction leak, that means air is being sucked in from somewhere it isnt' supposed to like a disconnected hose. The idle a/f mixture is sensitive to this and will cause the engine to idle higher or rougher than usual.

 

my original gut feeling reading this was to check the cats also, if you have any that is.

 

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, yes I do have my cats, but why would this cause my car to be all wacked out? It drove and ran perfect yesterday with my airpump disconnected. Either way, I'll put my belt back on (out of desperation, lol). WEIRD.

 

the air pump blows air onto the cat mixing with the combusted air acting like a torch to keep it nice and toasty, if the cat cools down too much with a rich mixture blowing on it the core can go into meltdown, partially blocking exhaust flow and restricting the exhaust causing all types of wierd drivability issues.

 

^^That's a good one, The car was idling in the drive and the cats heated up and collapsed

 

think it can't happen?

 

perhaps... I reattached the air pump and it acted exactly the same when I started it up. It would rev to like 3k with no problem (sounding OK), but it would want to die and when I was able to stabilize the idle at 2k (giving it gas), it sounded like it was MUCH lower, very muffled and 'cough-y'. It sounded like crap. It didn't have the characteristics of a vac. leak (which I've dealt with 3x this last week). I'm pretty sure a seal might be jacked internally, but if you guys are pretty certain it might be a collapsed cat, then I'll go ahead and gut it and see what happens.

Thanks for the help

 

you don't need to gut the cats, simply inspect them to see if the core has melted or blown out. if they have melted or blown out then you would need to gut em and clean out the chunks that went farther down the exhaust.

did you also check both leading and trailing coils for spark? could also be an injector clip that popped off a primary injector. number of things to check still.

 

If it is the cats, then the damage is already done.

 

^ I could honestly care less about the cats. I was planning on gutting them as soon as I passed emissons, but shoot...

I just can't really piece together how; the car ran perfect all of yesterday, started up and idled fine this morning, but when I came back out several minutes later it had died and now this weird crap... I could understand if I had been boosting and driving it hard, but it had just been peacefully idleing. The only thing that made sense to me at the time was that somehow a seal (internally) had let loose or something... I'm down to gut the cat tomorrow though.

 

me...i would say the cat. this may be dumb....but it happened to our honda crv. the cat got almost completely melted. low idles, low power, rpm's dont go as high, blah blah blah. so we hollowed out that bitch and it runs better than with a healthy cat.

 

I'm gonna pull it off right now. I'm remaining pessimistic, but hey, whatever, lol.

I think I'm gonna try starting it with no exhaust, just to get a little joy in my life, lol.

 

if the rotors are flooded or slightly flooded the rotors wont build compression, (from what i hear)

 

ya, except after I did the compression test yeilding 75-90 (the day before I got 90-90), I cranked the crap out of the motor, just to make sure that it wasn't flooded. I received the same results.

I just started the car with no exhaust and the car can't idle and it sounds funny. I think I'm just going to start tearing the thing down. Ironically, I just got my tax return ($1000 baby!), so I'm going to purchase some good housings to rebuild with. Any word on whether or not I'll be fine to re-use all of my new-ish Atkins seals?

I'll admit, these problems have the feel/appearance of a large vaccum leak, but I simply not convinced that a random vaccum leak suddenly appeared when the car was peacfully idleing. Everything was great the day before the 'problem' (almost TOO good, lol) and I hadn't tampered with anything. On the teardown I'm going to be looking for anything weird, but I really don't expect to find anything...

Thanks a lot for all the help doooods.

I'd still appreciate any words of advice, and if someone has any good info feel free to let me know.

 

You can reuse any seals that are within spec, but you will need one of those guages to find out. What the hell are those things called??

 

the tweezer things? =D

 

Would a plugged cat change the compression on one rotor?

Rob