my car blew up last night...

zilla · 06-26-03, 02:31

Last night I was driving my gf home. coming up to a red light, I downshifted. Just as I let off the clutch completely there was a loud, muffled bang - almost like a tire blow out or a sudden loss of compression. turned the engine off and coasted to the side of the road.

When i turn the engine over it sounds like a lawnmower, but 100000000000x louder. it'll rev, but the whole engine shakes and when i let off the gas, it'll stall like it's not getting enough air or gas.

I just got the car towed to the dealership to have them take a look at it.

For the last week I was getting an intermittant CEL. i had the codes pulled once with a vagcom and it was giving my idle adaptation at limit and a random misfire on cylinder #3. I did have a small vacuum leak on the hose between the FPR and the manifold and i replaced the hose. CEL went away for a few days and then came back.

the day before this happened, i'd start the car and the CEL would go off for a split second and then come back on.

Could this be the coilpack that blew up? i know about the VW 1.8T's and coil packs, but i've never heard of a 2.0 having coil pack issues.

mods: cat-back, K&N pannel, ns 256 cam, cam gear, turn2 lightened pulley.

any ideas? the dealer's gonna probably be able to look at it tomorrow morning and get back to me. I'm hoping it's something "minor" and that no damage was done.

Buck-O · 06-26-03, 02:36

Your dealer would consider fixing an engine with cams, cam pully, and under drive?
If i took my Sentra to the dealer like that, they would laugh at me and turn me away in a heartbeat.

Saddly, with the cams, the cam timeing (no mention of weither you ad adjusted the cam timing or not), and the underdrive, your asking for some trouble. And im affraid your problem will be slightly more mechanicly involved then a simple coil pack.

IndigoGTI · 06-26-03, 02:36

I hope for your sake that it is an ignition related problem, but from what you have described, if you downshifted too abruptly, you could have caused the engine to overrev. Sounds like you may have had a piston slap a valve. I really hope you have a mod-friendly dealer that you go to.

Shiny Lil Detlr · 06-26-03, 02:38

I had a friend who this happened to and had a similar symptom set... it turned out that his injectors (all four at once for some odd reason) went bad. Replaced those and all was well.

zilla · 06-26-03, 02:43

no, I didn't over rev the engine. the rev's were well below 4000 RPM.

The pulley isn't an underdrive one, it's just a lightened pulley.

The mods have been on the car for ages now, so i don't know. The cam isn't aggressive enough to get any ill effects from not changing the springs/retainers.

the dealer that I go to (Hunt Club VW

) is very mod friendly

zilla · 06-26-03, 02:46

I'm really paranoid about the first sound that I heard. If i didn't know better it was like a cylinder losing compression :scared :scared :scared

there were no fluids leaking from under the car and I checked the coolant and did't see any oil in it. I'm confident that the head gasket didn't blow. Still nervously waiting the call tomorrow morning.

Jngrbrdman · 06-26-03, 02:58

I've blown several head gaskets. There was never a sound associated with it. I've thrown a few rods in my day too. Lots of sound there.

The motor wasn't going to turn over for nothin though. I doubt that is the problem. I can tell you what it probably isn't all day long. lol Good luck figuring it out. I hate car problems.

zilla · 06-26-03, 03:29

Dealer just called me:

turns out that the spark plug wire for cylinder 3 came off. they don't know how or why, but they re-seated it

I'm almost embarassed to post this, but in my defense, the #2 and #3 spark plug wires are not readily accessible unless you remove the intake manifold :hammer:

I'm just relieved that it wasn't something catastrophic.

zilla · 06-26-03, 05:43

update: not the spark plug wire, but the actual spark plug itself came out! :O

zilla · 06-26-03, 07:42

yah. I felt a lot of stress leave when i found that out.

Should I be looking at putting some good fuel system cleaner into the tank and cleaning the insides of hte engine out and then change the fuel filter?

SickOfItAll · 07-09-03, 11:39

I hope they went ahead and did all your spark plugs - this is actually a known issue with my car, popping spark plug wires and IC piping - I've never had a plug wire come loose, but I've already knocked IC piping apart from shifting a bit too quick - lemme tell ya, that'll scare ya REALLY quick, first time it happened the engine was all of 3 weeks old with 2k miles on it and it had cost me 7 months and $8,000 to have built - I was REALLY nervous for about 5 minutes til I finally got off the road and popped my decklid.

TortoiseAWD · 07-10-03, 06:37

Oh, God, yes . . . popping an IC pipe is scary stuff. It's no big deal once you figure it out, but until then, pucker factor == high. Thoughts of "What blew up? And how much is it going to cost me?!" keep racing through your head, usually with a running background of cussing and swearing.

Tort