Hi all just wanted to introduce my self as I have recently purchased a 96 2.5 TL. I bought the car about a month ago with 184k miles on it for $2200. It runs pretty good and the boby/paint is in good condition.

After reading so may threads on seafoam I decided to try it myself. I did the complete seafoam treatment (crankcase/intake/gas tank) on the car about 2 weeks ago. The car seemed to perform better however the engine developed a knock on startup for about 5 sec now and goes away once the oil pressure gets up. I changed the oil/filter after ~100 miles. I was wondering if anyone else has experienced the same problem after seafoam. My best guess is that it cleaned the engine to well and possibly removed the buildup from the bearings causing the knock....any ideas???

I have read on some other forums that using a cleaner on high miliage engines can cause this instant knock syndrome.

I also have a CEL with a P401 code insufficent EGR flow. I have already cleaned the EGR valve and verified that it does function poperly. Is anyone familair with the solenoid that controls the EGR valve? Has it been known to fail on these vehicles?

Thanks for any responses and looking forward to being a part of the community.

 

I dunno much bout that stuff but welcome and congrats on yhr awesome purchase

 

They way I cleaned it was by removing the six screw and clean in. It was full of carbon.
http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/2494/egr5td.jpg

 

I'd avoid seafoam in the future unless it's a last resort. The seafoam isn't going to "cause" a knock but it's quite possible the previous owner was running thicker than standard oil to hide the knock and the seafoam effected that. Again, don't use stuff like that again is my advice.

You might want to do a compression test to test the general condition of the motor at this point. It's the same procedure as replacing the spark plugs [do it at the same time if you need to do it] plus a 20 dollar compression tester tool [thread in style is better]. An oil change wouldn't hurt either [use at least 10w].

The EGR goes bad in all* old cars eventually because of its dirty function. The EGR isn't 'too' expensive and usually its the labor thats killer, so if you can get to it that's half the battle or more. Try using this to look up the EGR's details and the compression test steps as well as it's generally the same for all cars auto forum search. Get that working now for emissions/etc. purposes because it'll get annoying if let problems build up.