Engine Clanking -WTF!!!

**Halon** · 08-18-2008

Well my car is screwed for awhile now I'm thinking. Here's a quick run-down of what just happened about 20 minutes ago.

** Just got my new TB installed the other day. I started up the car and got the TPS dialed in. Let the car warm up and set the Idle Screw so the car was idling nicely at about 1k. Everything sounded great, and I noticed the car was low on gas. Decided to make the 1 mile round trip to the gas station to fill it up. Got to the gas station, car seemed to be running just fine. Never even got it past 55mph, just a nice leasurly drive.

Filled it up, decided to get a car wash on it since it had lots of water spots and left over pink powder residue. Drove into the car wash, shut the car off. Car wash was done, turned the car on and drove through the dryer. About that time I realised my Tach wasn't working. Once I got back on central, it started bouncing around like maybe there was a loose connection or something. Figured maybe the water from the car wash was messing with the tach signal. I turned on DSMLink, and it was logging RPM's correctly, so I continued on since home is 2 stop lights away.

I'm still driving it normally, no hard accelleration at all. All of a sudden when I'm maybe 200 yards from the 2nd stop light, CLANK CLANK CLANK ***SH!T BOUNCING AROUND IN THE MOTOR *** CLANK CLANK.

Noticed a very very small amount of smoke coming from the rear of the car. Coasted it into the parking lot. First thing I do is pop the hood and look for something obvious. Nothing obvious. I look under the car for any fluids pouring out. Nothing. I crank the motor real quick and it sounds like the compression isn't so hot anymore.

I will be waiting a minute for the sun to go down and traffic to lighten up, and tow it home (only 30 seconds away).

I have no idea as of right now, wtf happened. Car seemed to be running fine. It was idling beautifully, running just fine. Then all of a sudden at maybe 4k RPM, 1/4 throttle, CLANK!

I'm so pissed right now, especially with the DYno Day on Saturday.

Anyone have any ideas or pointers? Is it a coincidince that this happened 1 minute after the RPM gauge stopped working?

Soon as I get it home, first things I'll be doing is removing the valve cover, spark plugs, timing belt cover, and draining the oil which I'm pretty sure will be completely full of metal shavings.

**Kracka** · 08-18-2008

That really sucks Brandon

polishmafia · 08-18-2008

Damn

I wish I could help figure out what it could be. If you need a helping hand tearing into it, call me.

johnson · 08-18-2008

check plugs?
maybe you will have your answer!

lets hope you didnt break a valve(s)!

GsXtUrBo98 · 08-18-2008

That's bad news!! I'm sorry man..

**Halon** · 08-18-2008

Opened up the valve cover, noticed this...

Then found this...

Pulled out the plugs. That broken rocker was from Cylinder 1. But when I removed the Cyl 1 plug, the gap seemed a little off, but I think I got it better now after getting some advice from Tom (Tpunx).

I compared all 4, they all look good right? Anyone have any advice?

I think my engine took a big

**Kracka** · 08-18-2008

Ouch! That sucks man.

**Halon** · 08-18-2008

On a positive note, I drained all the oil. The oil has, well, 1 mile on it, and it appears to be pretty clean.

I'll slowly be getting the head off the car to see how it looks inside and see how bad the cylinder walls look. I'm going to go ahead and assume the head is shot. Any body have a single roller rocker they'd be willing to part with?

**Kracka** · 08-18-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Halon

On a positive note, I drained all the oil. The oil has, well, 1 mile on it, and it appears to be pretty clean.

Will you be listing it for sale in the classifieds?

johnson · 08-18-2008

as i figured man! lets just hope it was the rocker that was makin the clank! and not the valves! mine was worse! i still have that spark plug somewhere! but that sucks man! i also broke 3 valves off into pistons and scarred the walls bad!

**Halon** · 08-18-2008

Yes, along with those 4 slightly used spark plugs. Deal of the century!

I've been trying to figure out what the Tach runs off, because I find it odd that this happened right after the tach starting going bazerk. Does it run off the CAS? I just checked, and it seems to be plugged in nice and tight. I wonder if the CAS is on it's way out?

**Halon** · 08-18-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by johnson

as i figured man! lets just hope it was the rocker that was makin the clank! and not the valves! mine was worse! i still have that spark plug somewhere! but that sucks man! i also broke 3 valves off into pistons and scarred the walls bad!

Yeah, but the rest of that spark plug has to be in there somewhere. Tomorrow after work it looks like I'll be ripping the head off.

johnson · 08-18-2008

yeah it melted/warped the shit out of my head too! mine happened right after a rebuild, my lil bro took it for the first test drive and came back without the car! dsmers worst nightmare! haha....

**Goat Blower** · 08-18-2008

See if you can check the height of the top of the piston in cylinder 1 in relation to cylinder 4 with both at TDC. Stick two equal length pencils or somethign in there and measure the tops. Unless there something in there like a broken valve stem, there's not much that could do that to your spark plug. Hopefully it's nothing. I might be able to drop by later tomorrow night if you need an extra set of eyes.

**Halon** · 08-18-2008

That spark plug was very hard to remove. I'm pretty sure even if the rest of the head is somehow magically fine, I'll still have to put a helicoil or do something with that spark plug hole. The heads coming off.

If you want to stop by though, please do so. Maybe I'll have the head off by the time you're here, and you can give me some pointers on how the rest of everything looks (cylinder walls, piston tops, etc.)

Kevin 1G Drummer · 08-18-2008

Wow, that really sucks Brandon!

TkrPerformance · 08-18-2008

shitty. I have a few rockers and a compleat head sitting here

sleepydsm · 08-18-2008

holy shit. I just dont understand how that happened to the plug?

jhaan_dude · 08-18-2008

wow, i would check for the rest of the parts of the needle bearing.....

jhaan_dude · 08-18-2008

and on the tach running funny, there is a "power transistor which deals with most of the dash readouts, it has a plug as wide as a 2g maf, when that gets loose or goes bad it would cause a bad readout to the dash, and the ecu... i had the same thing happen on my car, but luckily it was in my driveway and i had a spare...