[RESOLVED] 94 Talon Sounds Like Subaru... Blown Headgasket?

[_1466_]

Today, after a spirited drive up the canyon, I stopped in Estes Park for a quick fill up and enjoyed an awesome Rocky Mountain sunset. On my way back down the canyon my car began to feel a little awkward. Suddenly, at about 45 mph in 4th gear my car transformed into a Subaru boxer motor.

I pulled over hoping to find a blown intercooler coupling. I didn't. Temp and oil pressure were both normal so I decided to baby the car home. I have read several similar posts and will be starting my morning off with checking spark, compression, and the injector plugs but my gut tells me I probably blew the head gasket and then some...

I'll have vids up in the morning.

 

[No_Skillz]

Sounds more like a cylinder misfire.

 

[_1466_]

Thats definitely what I'm hoping for!

 

[RayBan GST]

try to unplug your injectors and see if there is a difference in sound , hopefuly its a misfire , check your coil pack connection also.

 

[_1466_]

Went back out and looked over the motor. Wow... I feel dumb for overlooking this. Gotta love the black goo oozing from my coil... I'm assuming that would be my misfire.

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[RayBan GST]

did it fix the problem ? i hope so

please let us know

 

[_1466_]

I started to investigate the bad coil this morning. I started the car and it was running worse than last night so I killed it. Now the car won't crank at all... I'm kind of stuck trying to do a compression test right now. I'm starting to believe that this is an electrical issue.

Several days ago I fried a battery by shorting it with a wrench while working on the throttle elbow (definitely a rookie mistake). I replaced the battery and am worried that it may have done damage elsewhere. With the car off, battery voltage reads 13.08V. Wow, this could be a lot of things...

Should I be looking for a bad ground somewhere specific to the ignition system?

 

[_1466_]

Turns out that a wire on the same coil circled above had rubbed away all of the insulation. The bare wire was touching the metal mounting plate and most likely grounding my ignition system. Hence a blown 30A ignition fuse.

Luckily, compression checked out at ~140psi on every cylinder so I'm replacing the melted coil tomorrow and looking into the injectors just in case. I also threw in a new set of properly gapped plugs... can't hurt.

 

[bnr32_coupe]

a special note for any other members experiencing the same symptoms:

to find which cylinder is causing the misfire, when the car is "sounding like a subaru", unplug every coil and listen to any changes in the sound of the engine. if you unplug a coil and the engine doesnt sound different, then you've located which cylinder is causing the problem.
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[_1466_]

Removing each coil caused the motor to change. Any ideas on what else my issue may be?

 

[cbrfrenzie]

Since you are running a COP setup without sequential control over the coils, your behavior is slightly different.
Its a wasted spark system from the factory, so if you unplug one COP coil, it actually disables two coils, that's why EVERY coil is making the sound change. If it were sequential spark then the coils would not be ran in series, and this test would work better.

Also, if you had the stock coils you could simply remove each spark plug wire at a time, and the test works that way. When you un-plug the COP coil on the top, you are disconnecting the primary side of the coil, when you remove the spark plug wire from the stock coils, you are disabling the secondary side of the coils. Hope that sheds some light for ya

 

[_1466_]

Most definitely does! Thanks for that insight. I was wondering about that and it makes perfect sense.

 

[_1466_]

Replaced the coil and re-wired it. Runs great! Thanks for the help and insight guys. I'm thinking about upgrading to a dynatek unit... time to make that COP an upgrade not a downgrade.