Sputtering, Bad idle, No power, Not a BL

[Lavery]

My car is stock except a halman pro MBC (at 10psi) and Megan 3in exhaust.

My car was running fine except for a strange noise that would happen sporadically when i went into boost. It was a vibrating kind of pulsating noise. There was a thread on here started by a Moderator or Wiseman with the same problem but I could not find it.

After getting a flat tire on the highway I pull over to change the tire. Once it was changed and I start the car back up I have ZERO power. When I say zero power I mean that I had trouble getting up to 20mph going slightly downhill.

I got the car home and did a BLT, checked fuses, checked spark plugs, checked vacuum lines, checked couplers, checked for shaft play in the turbo. Drained the oil and waved a magnet through the oil but no shavings, checked the timing and I grabbed a spare MAF from a friend but still nothing was out of place.

When the car is sitting idling it idles around 100 rpm but never stalls out. Also there is a strong smell of fuel in the engine bay but I couldn't find any leaks of puddles and no drops on the ground.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. This is my only car and I have family to go see for the holidays.

 

[RadDsm]

Check your timing.

 

[Lavery]

I did. It was dead on.

 

[LiquidX]

What was the boost leak tested to and for how long did it hold? Where was the test performed on the intake track?

How do the plugs look?

 

[Lavery]

Actually I went out and did another BLT tonight and this time went to 15psi and I had a leak I didn't notice before. It was a coming from the nipple on the valve cover that is pointed towards the fuse box. I took the PCV and shook it and it rattles and i can blow through it one way but not the other. I performed the BLT from the turbo inlet. It held pressure from 15psi to 0 for probably two minutes.

The plugs look fine. They are not excessively white or black. Nor do they have oil on them. They are all gaped to spec as well.

 

[Lavery]

I did a few more tests today. I did a compression test and checked for spark. Compression averages were 169 168 173 171 with no big gaps in numbers on any cylinder. The test was done when the car was at operating temp.

When checking for spark I did not have any spark on cylinders 1 and 4. When checking for spark on cylinder 2 there was spark coming from the plug, but there was also a large spark coming from the coil pack from one of the brass screws. Could this be a bad coil? Anything else I can check now?

 

[LiquidX]

So it's arcing with the plug wires attached at the coilpack?

 

[Lavery]

So it's arcing with the plug wires attached at the coilpack?

Yes. With all the wires still attached at the coil. None of the wires are attached to spark plugs except the one I was check for spark on. It only arks when I ground the cylinder 2 spark plug. I'll try to link the video I took.

DSM Spark coming from coil pack. - YouTube

 

[92AWDHX40]

Terry's Talon Troubleshooting Tips #3 - Fast Idle (aka. Idle Surge)

 

[Lavery]

Terry's Talon Troubleshooting Tips #3 - Fast Idle (aka. Idle Surge)

This was unhelpful and not relevant to my problem.

 

[92AWDHX40]

So nothing in there helped you said bad idle in your thread, that was definitely a idle thread.

 

[Lavery]

So nothing in there helped you said bad idle in your thread, that was definitely a idle thread.

That link was for fixing idle surge. Maybe you linked the wrong thing?

 

[92AWDHX40]

No bad idle can mean a lot of things it was only to help you, some things could have helped, so many over look simple things and say thats not my issue its not surge fine but its a nice list to help you rule out one thing at a time, i had idle issues and lots of problems but some peoples threads helped me even though they werent directly related. Hope you figure your issue out, its your dd that can be frustrating. Idle at 100 surprised it doesnt stall that low, idle shoud be around 800.

 

[Lavery]

I figured it out. It turned out to be the coil pack for cylinders 1 and 4. Easy enough fix.