ok........so the ol girl started running like it had a dead cylinder the other day, and having read quit a bit on these coil packs failing i ordered one from NAPA. tonight i pulled the "valve cover, cover" off pulled all the coil pack wires checked and lubed them and plugged them back in.......

started the car

and pulled one plug off at a time and found the number three from the front dead...............replaced the pack.......still dead...............swapped the number 1 with the number 3 {original packs} and the number 3 is still dead.

i unplugged number 3 and stuck my test light in and have power ther with the car running........

i then pulled the spark plug stuck it in the pack and grounded it on the head and started the car.....its got good spark...........?????

put it all back together and the cylinder is dead

ummm....WTF???? lol

anybody got any ideas????

 

Have you checked the compression? Is #3 different than the others?

 

What condition is spark plug # 3?

I would also check the power stages. They're 2 - in the front and rear of intake. Each of them fires 3 cylinders. Swap them and see if the misfire shifts.

Power stages fail a lot quicker than a cylinder, and sometimes more than coil packs themselves.

 

what do the power stages do ? ....im not ruling out a dead cylinder but im wandering more if i have a bad injector or some sort of clog??? maybe???

 

ok changed the plug last night...no change

next step will be to swap power stages when i figure out where they are....my boss bought a compression tester yesterday ...so when i can get the car away from momma ill take it in and see what that reveals......man this sux....i hate running a car at 80%

 

ok....long day under the hood

did a compression test on the bad cylinder and the ones on either side first thing.....130 on the outboards and less than 5 on the bad one......not good

we verified spark again

then we hooked air directly into the bad cylinder and bumped the motor over verifying that the intake valves are opening and closing - air blows out through the intake when open

the exhaust however never stops blowing out the tailpipe - it slows down considerably when the valve is supposed to be closed but still seeps some...and is full force when open

this tells me ive either burnt, bent or have a weak spring......other than the fact that the dead thump thump thump smooths out at higher rpms.....if i had a bent or broken valve i would think the noise would get worse the higher the revs go.....logical??

so the next thing we thought was a severe amount of carbon build up....the car sat for over a year and had to be choked with a rag to move it around because of a bad fuel pump.....

so i took it into midas who still does BG induction cleaning and had a service...they shoot a chemical into the intake then they disable the fuel pump and hook directly to the fuel rail and run chems through ...then they put a pretty strong additive cleaner in the tank.......the guy said they had to take the car out of the shop because it filled the place with smoke there was so much carbon burning out of it, lol

long story short, he doesn't think its a mechanical failure [bad valve] but the cylinder still sounds dead......he thinks she's just so crudded up that its gonna take a tank or two of fuel to get her cleaned out

so 120 bucks a lost day of work and 2 cans of seafoam and im running the hell out of this thing for the next week or so to see what happens


wish us luck !!!

 

Yes. Textbook problem caused by sitting. The best way to loosen it up -- drive in Low drive, at 50-55 mpg at 4500-5000 rpm, for 10-15 minutes. It will burn deposits on exhaust valves.

 

lol.....ok? will this motor handle 5grand for 10-15 minutes?

induction treatment seems to be working a little so far, haven't put many miles on it since we did the service

rspi, says the 960 needs to be running 91 octane as well??? i'm going to try that on the next couple tanks and see if theres a difference

 

This Porsche-engineered motor loves high-revs. It will go 5000 rpm or higher all day long.

Rspi is right on the 91 octane. I have tried 87 and works ok, yet it uses more MPG, it actually it's more expensive than 91.

 

ok....today was the first tank of 93 octane..[13.6mpg on the last tank, wtf? ]..so far after a week of driving with a couple cans of seafoam in the tank and the induction flush there is no real discernible difference in the knock, thump, skip what ever we're calling it today...im getting really nervous about it being a bad valve the replacement processes ive been reading sound like a nightmare and im pretty fair with a wrench

i did take it out today and run in low gear 5200 rpm's for 5-10 minutes ...still no difference....

i just cant see throwing 1000 bucks at a 600 dollar car for a head job...FML

so we wait another tank and no change and im going to start stressing

 

I am a skeptic for Seafoam in the tank. Have you tried this other method which works much better Chinese Water Torture (a SeaFoam recipe) - Turbobricks Forums ?

Have you done a compression test?

If the valve is stuck from sitting too long, try again 4500-5000 for 15-20 minutes. You gotta leave it a little longer for the heat to work the deposits loose.

$ 1000 for head job is way too much if you can DIY (except machine shop, of course).

You can buy whole motors now for about $ 500 at JY.

 

yes i did a compression test last week.....all "good" cylinders are within 5 pounds of each other at about 150.....the number 3 cylinder pops to about 20 psi and doesn't hold anything......i stuck a snake light into the sparkplug hole and the top of the cylinder looks perfect....no cracks, holes etc.

we put air pressure on the cylinder and turned the motor over verifying the intake valves opening and closing [air blows out of the intake when open and not when closed] the tailpipe has a little air coming out when the exhaust valves should be closed and alot when they are open] thus telling us that the exhaust valve isn't closing all the way]...this doesnt tell us if it's deposits holding it open or its bent, broke, week spring etc. though..........

the thump seems to go away at higher rpm's making me think it wasn't a broken valve train issue as my thought was it would get worse at higher rpm's ...but i could be wrong

i'll try a longer high rpm drive when i can get back in her

really pisses me off.....i love this car ....lol

 

It should loosen up. Try the Chinese torture too.

 

Chinese torture?.............did i miss something? lol

 

Did you get the link at one of my posts above?

 

isnt that basically what midas did with their induction flush thing?.....ill definately try it though......first things first............yesterday the wife asked me to drive her car as im walking out the door at 530 to go to work....."its making a grinding noise"........hhhmmmmmm....rear brakes gone....i took it to work did the brakes and backed it out of the shop leaving it running while i cleaned up......i come out to go home and the car is full of steam!!!! aaaahhhhh heater core is gone.....i pulled it back in got on the phone and ordered a heater core {next Wednesday} and bypassed the heater core with a PVC ****** fitting....gggrrrrrrrrr - i cant fix the motor if im fixing everything else dam it !!!!

 

water torture didnt do anything but scare the crap out of the wife............when i first got the car it had a very weird "idle" at start up......a really bad surge....it seemed to go away and then this number 3 cylinder issue began to rear its ugly head.......yesterday i took it to the store .......when i started it [35-40 degrees] out with no heat now mind you...i didnt want to sit and wait very long so i went to take off....literally no fuel control? its like the pedal isnt even conected.....put it in park wait a few moments for the idle to smooth out and she drives fine.....at the store it did the same thing......is there some sort of computer control that is failing on it ? i mean you can smash the throttle and nothing happens........when the idle smooths .....smash the throttle and even on 5 cylinders she takes off like a rocket........im looking for another motor, momma is not happy "i thought Volvos were indestructible" ---thats what im getting now


ggggrrrrrrrr

 

Have you cleaned the IAC valve and the Throttle body?

Run a vacuum test this way and tell us which scenario do you get.

 

Reading through your thread -- compression of 150 is way too low. It should be above 180 minimum.

 

i just rechecked my notes.....188-192 minus the number 3 cylinder....sorry bout that

wow ...love that thread on the vacuum tests...ill do it this week when i take it to work to do the heater core

i found a good used head for 175, gaskets 140, head bolts 50 and a friend will do it for 25 and hour .....not a cheap fix

found a 14,000 mile motor in southern new jersey for 3500, 97k motor in mass for 1400 and a 610k motor in ohio for 400 bucks, lol

id love to do the 14k motor but its just not in the cards right now....i could buy another car for that money and momma dont like wagons at all....lol