Did I blow it up?

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I was screwing around...shouldn't have, but I did.. it had a lack of power up hills so I was trying to advance the timing. The book said line up the yellow mark, which didn't seem right because the first mark to come up should have been the 10* btdc, and the next mark should have been TDC...but I set it to the yellow mark like the book said, which is the second mark to come up to the pointer.

Anyway, I took off up a hill, less than a 4 minute round trip, and when i get back it doesn't want to idle, so I set the distributor back to where it was originally and opened up the idle screw to get it to idle. It idled so I set the timing back to where the pointer is on the white mark (first mark to come around) and it idles fine, doesn't blow out smoke.

As soon as you hit the throttle (easy) it knocks, and blows smoke, if you rev it up past 3k it revs down and stalls....and blows a bunch of white smoke out.

Did I just blow out the head gasket or did I do worse damage? The exhaust manifold is cracked and leaking too.

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It's not knocking now, just missing and blowing out white smoke, a thick cloud when you push the gas, it doesn't stall out.

To me, the exhaust smells like gas. The oil hasn't turned to milk yet, and I am not seeing any coolant loss but the car has only ran(idled) for a few minutes.

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This was a two part problem, from last night, the misfire is gone, but it still smokes white. I took the valve cover off and set my torque wrench to 60 ft lbs, 9 out of 10 head bolts rotated 20* before the wrench clicked. It's still blowing out white smoke but I can't see any coolant loss in the radiator and the car hasn't overheated yet at all, I put a 180* thermostat in.

[rmoltis]

it may be your catalytic converter. It has to be clogged.
You just had your o2 sensor out which helps regulate lean/rich condition to where the cat operates most efficienctly.
And if it was outside the exhaust and was reading high oxygen levels.
That means your car was running rich and the catalytic converter possibly got overloaded with more exhaust gasses than it could process being that is already an older converter I assume.
and on top of that with your higher compression the exhaust gasses are probably theoretically higher meaning that either the clogged converter is burning off the nasty stuff deposited inside of it. Or it has melted the inside of it due to being clogged.

This matches your symptoms of not being able to go up hills under accelleration and your earlier diagnosis of believeing it was due to too much backpressure as well as the gas smell, which can be from a bad/clogged converter. I'd put my o2 sensor back in and get a new cat as well as tuning the carburetor back to stock as to not run to rich. And chances are that's the cause.

Maybe if you run it with the o2 sensor back in and everything set back to stock you might be able to burn the gunk out of your cat and get it flowing good again if your lucky.

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haha, it can't be, I didn't put a cat on the car! I'm in ohio, catalytic converters are nothing more than a hundred dollar bill to us at the scrap yard.

I was looking around the car and there was a massive oil leak where the flex pipe is a cheap POS, then I found oil spewing out of the back of the engine between the block and head on the #4 cylinder...so I went ahead and pulled the head back off. The permatex copper spray made a mess, but judging from it's pattern, the gasket was sealed to the block just fine, but the head to gasket seal is compromised on the #1 cylinder from the coolant passage to the cylinder, then again from the oil galley AND coolant passage escaping out the back of the block.I'm working on getting a picture of this before I clean it and put it back together.

[MasterTec]

Re: Did I blow it up?

You do realize that removing a converter is against FEDERAL law. It does not matter if they do emissions testing or not.

[bhazard]

Re: Did I blow it up?

I think we all know that.

Did you know speeding is illegal too?

[rmoltis]

You do realize that removing a converter is against FEDERAL law. It does not matter if they do emissions testing or not.

I just don't like how if you have a cat off your forcing people driving behind you to breathe in toxic, and poisonous vapors that cause cancer and other illnesses. And they have no choice. Its like would you sit behind your car with no cat on and just breathe in all the vapors and gasses. For most the answer would be no. But for people not running cats you are consciously making the decision to forcefully poison and endanger other people's lives and health. Not to mention I've read many experiments that compared on the dyno a stock cat, with a high flow cat, and no cat and the high flow cat gained 2-3 hp over stock while no cat only yielded on average 1 hp over the high flow cat. So what is the need to endanger other people's health and do something where you can be fined up to $30,000 and have your car impounded just for 1hp? I'm not trying to argue or derail your thread or make anyone mad just wondering why people risk all of that to gain 1hp.

I just bought a 1.75" high flow magnaflow cat for $68 brand new online. They are not even that expensive.

Glad you found your problem. By the sound of things it made quite the nasty mess of your air.
Good luck with your build I'm interested in seeing what kind of gains you see from the shaved head.

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Anyway, I think where I went wrong was using the permatex copper spray. Usually when I pull a head, the gasket sticks to either the head or the block, this one didn't. My neighbor (mechanic) pointed out that the gasket is made of a material that gets hot and mends itself to metal, when I put the copper spray on it, I made a layer between the HG and the head/block that wouldn't allow the HG to bond/seal to the aluminum. Had I not screwed with the timing it probably would not have leaked antifreeze into the chambers and been burning white smoke, but it would still be leaking out of the back of the engine where that part had probably been leaking all along and I just didn't notice.

Gotta wait till 11am tomorrow to pick up a new HG. Nobody close has one, nobody! Called napa, oreillys, advance, azone, mtta ignition.. so hopefully I can get it back running again tomorrow. I used coarse grit emery cloth on the block today, and a nylon pad thing on my die grinder to shine it up. Maybe things will work out better this time.

[bobbyspider]

Ha ha I have no cat either and it smells great! sorry your dealing with these car issues Matt. Is this your BP spire?

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No, this is the new car. If I can get this running tomorrow I'm gonna get started on the BP car again this week. I feel a rebuild comming on for that engine too, but I won't know till I get it fired up and find out. It has a MLS gasket and the copper spray did seal to the block so there's a chance it might be ok. Time and money man.. we'll see how it turns out.

[bobbyspider]

To bad I don't live closer bro id be there turning wrenches with ya

[MasterTec]

Ha ha I have no cat either and it smells great! sorry your dealing with these car issues Matt. Is this your BP spire?

That's one of the most ridiculous statements I've ever heard. Sure you can smell and usually see Hydrocarbons (unburned fuel) but that's actually the least harmful of vehicle emissions. Carbon Monoxide is clear and odorless and much more harmful to a person's health and NOx emissions (Oxides of Nitrogen) which is also clear and odorless builds up in the air and causes smog which causes asthma and many other health problems.

When are people going to realize that removing a catalytic converter yields zero performance gains (on a passenger vehicle) and can sometimes be detrimental to performance? Add in the fact that it's illegal and can cause you huge fines and it's just plain stupid to eliminate it.

Yeah you might think you won't get caught but when you cop an attitude at the officer who pulls you over for speeding - well that will make him just a little more motivated to get that inspection mirror out of his patrol car and then instead of a ticket you're looking at your vehicle being impounded and a hefty fine on top of that!

Herp Durp!

[bobbyspider]

bro its cool relax it was a joke. I have no cat cause the car didn't have one when I bought the shell. And the cops around here could give 2 craps less if I have one or not. They pull over my friend all the time just because he's black and drives a 4dr m3 typical stereotype junk. The straight pipe has nothing to do with performance at all I'm lacking a cat and back seats because they weren't there to begin with. I still don't know why bikes don't need to have them but cars do. Just a thought. And yes weirdly I do like the smell of uncatalited exhaust

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For the record Mr. Durp, I didn't remove this cat, the car came to me without one. I don't want to argue symmantics, and I don't appreciate you going off topic in my thread. If you want to complain about it I suggest making a thread in the arena where such matters can be approached in a proper manner.