Help, i think my car\'s dying!

[sideshow bob]

Took my car out for a wee spin today decided to give it a bit of a blast to clear out the cobwebs. what with the weather lately its not been easy to give it a good rev to clear things out.

so im out and about, the car\'s all warmed up and i find a nice quite section of dual carriageway. so i accelerate in 2nd, crazy wheelspin, into 3rd still a bit of wheelspin, into 4th and i start accelerating, the cars doing a bit of hestitating while accelerating, i try to rev through it, put my foot on the floor and it hesitates like mad, my cat light on the dash flashes a couple of times and my power fc shows a highest knock level of 115. my foot was barely on the accelerator for a second while this happened.

now the car runs really rough, like its chugging along, when its at low revs it sounds like a subaru. i managed to get it to my mates which was closest after it happened to let it cool down. ive just brought it home and it feel worse than when it was warm, the revs wont pick up at all, the cat light is constantly flashing, and the knock levels on the power fc are all over the place.

any ideas?

bob

[Jono FD3]

Have you got a boost gauge mate???
If you have and you have lost a tip, the needle will be bouncing all over at idle!! If this is all OK, you kight be lucky & find it\'s a plug gone bang!!!

Jono

[sideshow bob]

yeah i have a boost guage. i noticed when i was driving it was bobbing up and down, but i cant remember if it did it on idle

[m4drx]

may have boost spiked in the cold weather or probably needs new plugs.

[Mims]

Did you check all your vacuum pipes are still on? If you have a loss of boost then you may have blown a pipe off. Or maybe the pipe off the MAF sensor has come off. Always start by checking the simple stuff.

[olly-civic]

cats usually get hot when unburnt fuel makes its way down the exhaust and burns inside the car, they usually stink too, this unburnt fuel could be caused by a missfire, like its been said check plugs, leads if that dont help then a small electrical fire followed by an insurence claim wound be an idea lol *joke*

[sideshow bob]

i dont think it even reached full boost. think it maxed at 0.77 bar, set up for 0.9 on stock twins running a non seq set up, rats nest all removed. i\'ll try some new plugs and see if it makes a difference. i hope its not cracked a tip although i never got a chance to even rev it hard and it wasnt under any stress for longer than like half a second at the most

bob

[sideshow bob]

yeah also meant to say, although my cat light was coming on i have a straight through, decatted exhaust. dont know if that means anything!?

bob

[D1 WTF]

Sounds to me like you have chipped a seal (tip).  happened to me a few times unfortunately.  
Does it sound a bit like a tractor on tick over?
And feel like it has very little power on acceleration?
However when at revs in excess of 4k ish, you cant really notice much different in sound/feel etc.

[rx7veilside]

hard to start warm/boost gge fluttering noticeably on idle/car chugging /vibrating all sounds like u have lost a tip or more ime afraid

[m4drx]

yeah also meant to say, although my cat light was coming on i have a straight through, decatted exhaust. dont know if that means anything!?

bob

the light was coming on as it was detecting the high nock.

unfortunatly it sounds like tips as said. before condemming it get a compression test done to confirm.

hope it all works out mate.

if it is a tip etc, remember to find out why.

in this cold weather a guess would be a spike in boost.

[sideshow bob]

ok thanks guys. i\'ll prob need to wait til the weekend to have a look at it in daylight and i\'ll do some investigating. if it is a cracked tip, how much does it typically cost to have an engine rebuilt?

bob

[m4drx]

£3k or thereabouts all depends on what you want to do etc

[Lawler]

Right..Sorry to rub salt in the wound (i\'m new to this stuff) but what\'s the moral to this story? I mean, in cold weather & all. Would letting the car tick over for a few minutes at startup
help avoid this kind of upset?

[Kevin]

Right..Sorry to rub salt in the wound (i\'m new to this stuff) but what\'s the moral to this story? I mean, in cold weather & all. Would letting the car tick over for a few minutes at startup
help avoid this kind of upset?

Nope.  You would get boost creep/spike regardless of how hot or cold the engine was, it\'s the ambient temp outside which determines it, with no sort of boost control.  At most you\'d probably end up with a blown water seal boosting on a cold engine.

With proper mapping boost could probably be controlled (according to Pip), but i opted for a boost controller aswell just incase.