sauceman

Is not necessarily reassuring.



Those black speckles you see on the bumper is not pitch, it's soot.



Ok let me list the symptoms I've been experiencing since late August and try and offer a diagnostic. Let's see if you guys agree or have other ideas on what could be wrong.

- Upon startup in the morning, the car starts, then stall almost immediately after. This can repeat two or three times before I finally get to launch the car.

- When I finally get rolling, I have to rev higher to keep it from stalling, say 2500-3000k, I get this huge, and I mean HUGE cloud of blue smoke coming out from behind. The kind of cloud that doesn't let you see anything else in the rearview mirrors.

- Once the car is in temp, no more blue smoke.

- Upon accelerating, the car ranges from hesitant to downright sounding like it's strangled. This will occur throughout the entire rev range.

- When I give it gas from a standing start, or any gear for that matter, I get the same huge cloud, only very black this time around. Yesterday I gunned it beside an old diesel chevy pickup who did the same and I was putting out more smoke.

- I have had absolutely no CEL come on.

- Fuel mileage is not up to par as of late.

----------------------

I'm believing more and more that it's either one or both of two possible problems: A) Either there is restriction along the pumping line (exception made to air filter, it's brand new), or there is poor engine management.

This is based on the idea that black smoke means the engine is running rich, and blue smoke means the engine is burning oil.

The fact that it burns oil when cold doesn't really worry me, given that the engine now has 246,000Km. It could be something as basic as dry valve seals leaking oil into the combustion chamber.

But the richness of the mixture is perplexing. What could cause this?

Faulty O2 sensor? If so, why no CEL?

Clogged cat? Could be , but the ECU would also throw a CEL. I've had that before.

Throttle body not opening properly? OMG. This could be a mechanical or electrical malfunction.

Could it be the ECU ordering a wrong mixture on it's own? OMG again.


What's your take on this?

curls

The blue smoke on startup / cold is almost 100% gonna be your valve seals. They let oil leak down from the valvetrain area and then when you start the car, it's firstly getting choked with oil (the stalling), and then firing up w/ blue smoke (oil burning). Surprisingly, new valve seals aren't that expensive, and as I mentioned to you before, I have a guy that'll do them for you really cheap, and he's about 1hr from the West Island.

As for the black smoke on gunning it, you can try coasting at a high rpm and then flooring it. If you get the massive cloud, it might be piston rings that are the problem. I had BLACK smoke w/ my Integra before this, same kinda situation, and it was piston rings. Do you get a puff of black/blue at high-rpm shifts, say from 1-2 or 2-3? If so, look at rings.

Also, the cat and O2 might be so fouled that they're dumping fuel into the engine, and the only real solution to that is twofold: Fix the reason why its getting clogged/fouled (above ^) and also, replace the O2 sensor and look at getting a new Cat, too.

There are lots of articles online about how to diagnose this stuff, too... I recommend running a Google search on it for sure.

And, for what its worth, I had the EXACT same soot/crap on my bumper every 1000km or so while I was burning oil (you know that story already). Since the new block, no soot whatsoever. I even cleaned the exhaust finishers (polished) and they haven't got black whatsoever since the new block was put in.

drunkenbuda

How much for a new block?

curls

Warranty (after umpteen hours of fighting) .

drunkenbuda

Good shit, how many mile you had until you had the block problem?

godfather2

you might be running too rich of an a/f ratio. do yourself a favor and get it checked out. good luck ...

jmathew34

time to get the motor rebuilt by kingmotorsports or toda!!!!

sauceman

Good stuff.

I'll have to think things over if such is the case though.

junktionfet

What does the blue smoke smell like? Burning oil through a cold catalyst has a distinct odor, though you can still tell it is oil.

Have you noticed accelerated oil consumption? If you pinch off the breather lines to the valve cover and remove the oil cap, how much blow-by do you see?

With the engine dead cold, use a digital VOM and check the resistance across the engine coolant temp sensor. Do the same when the engine is at normal operating temperature. Cold resistance should be 2kohms or higher (up 10k on very cold mornings), hot resistance should be 500 ohms or less. Granted those are older specifications, but I doubt Honda would rewrite 30 years of EFI history with new NTC sensor values.

Though it is nearly impossible to check, I wonder if the VTEC rockers are sticking and the engine's valvetrain is staying in high RPM mode all the time. Or--I wonder if the VTC mechanism is sticking and therefore screwing up the cam overlap. That would definitely throw off manifold vacuum readings (thus messing up the mixture). I'm amazed there's no MIL yet. The ECU must allow a wide range of long term fuel trim before it flags an error.

If I didn't live a zillion miles away I could hook my laptop up to it and we could look at the fuel trim and MAP sensor readings just to see what's up.

Oh--check all of the engine ground blocks. A high resistance ground will always result in a rich mixture--and it throws ALL of the voltage references off. Make sure the engine (mainly the sensors) and the ECU are at the same ground potential--and that point has a solid low-resistance connection to the chassis ground and to the battery.

I've seen under certain conditions like that, the engine doesn't even know the fuel trim is off (since all references are screwed up), and only a DTC P030x gets flagged (random multiple misfire) if it's bad enough.

curls

Very interesting theory...

And Sauceman - have someone who knows the smell of oil vs. gas, follow you on a back road somewhere, and smell the shit your exhaust is spitting out... maybe help diagnose rich vs. oil.

curls

To not hijack sauceman's thread, please take a look at my posts ("VTEC at 3000rpm... Ha!" is one of them)... but in short: it was probably burning oil before I bought the car used at 72,000km *about 45K miles.

ClutchPerformer

From the looks of those pics, undo the diesel swap you did to get that stellar gas mileage (now I know the secret).

Seriously: I agree 100% with what Curls said. I'd have them check the O2 sensor/cat anyway. It could be something as simple as your check engine *light* not working. I really hope it's not a piston ring issue. Let us know!

theElio

My CEL/heat gauge didn't work in my last car and I had the same symptoms you have except no blue smoke. Turns out I overheated my car, didn't know, to the point where the spark plug exploded into one my pistons.It was driveable but barely.Exceptionally hesitant, black smoke, 80 miles to an entire tank of gas, fun!

Chris_F

I've always thought blowing blue smoke is more serious than just running rich. Goodluck sorting it out

mrgold35

Man, you got a lot of miles on your TSX!

246,000 kilometers = 152,864 miles

It takes me almost 10 years to rack up that type of mileage. You were out of the normal warranty after the 12 to 18 months with that kind of mileage.

I read in another thread where another high mileage TSX had the similar (not the exact same) problem with +100,000 miles on the ODO. I think the original owner said he didn't break in the car the right way the first 600 miles (a lot of constant highway miles with cruise control).

I was expecting the K24 motor to last +200,000 miles without and major problems with routine maintenance. I hope your experience is the exception and not the rule for us future high mileage owners.

sauceman

Thanks for the help Junktionfet.

I guess this is a bad case of the engine getting older. The question will probably be, do I repair, change the block or just put up with it.

Mokos23

Sauceman are you trading in your TSX next yr? At almost 153,000 miles that's a lot for a car that is less than 4 yrs old. Have you replaced your timing chain? Or is it timing belt at all?

curls

I think the best thing in your case wuold be a full compression test and leakdown test to determine where the smoke is coming from. A leakdown test, even at a dealership, shouldn't be overly pricey (say 30-45 minutes of labour or thereabouts), and will give you a very good indication of if its the valve seals, the rings, or the head gasket (not likely) that is causing your exhaust to pump out diesel-like smoke.

From there, if it's valves and/or rings, you can look at getting the repairs done. I'd estimate about $1000 incl. parts for the complete rebuild, via my friend Eric in Limoges. Maybe even cheaper, to be honest. However, that won't take care of any block problems themselves. Remember my situation: They replaced the rings and valve seals but it still burned oil -- turns out something was wrong with the block itself, most likely. That would require a new block (a new shortblock easily being over $5,000 CDN + labour.). You MIGHT be able to find an engine from a wrecker, somewhere, but even that will be $$ compared to a rebuild job.

Anyhow, I'd highly suggest determining what the cause is via a leakdown and compression test, first, and then from there decide if there are other factors at work, like computer problems from a faulty sensor, dumping too much/little fuel into the engine for the given RPM.

junktionfet

Yeah I wouldn't give up on the engine just yet... you may find that it is mechanically sound, but some other component has gone pear-shaped.

In addition to the other checks, have you looked at the spark plugs lately, just to see if they are oily or covered in ash? Keep us posted.

moda_way

The next question sauceman is... what is your oil consumption?

curls

Yeah, a pic of each spark plug tip (and the rest, if you want), would be good in diagnosing, or "reading", the engine.

PixelHarmony

Sounds like a bump to a TL Type-S soon

Good luck with that, I would love to throw input but since I don't know much I'll just give some moral support.

joerockt

The hesitation might be due to a clogged fuel filter. When was the last time you had it replaced?

curls

I was thinking of that, too, but wouldn't that be contradictory to piss-poor gas mileage / running rich?

Or would a clogged fuel filter only be a problem when at light/no throttle, and not a problem when at WOT?

joerockt

I would think a symptom would be when giving WOT its sputters.

You're right about the mileage thing thought. You would think getting less gas to the engine wouldnt be hurting mileage.

And the blue smoke is definatly oil buring.

junktionfet

A clogged fuel filter would result in low fuel pressure only during long injector duty cycles. The fuel pressure might be normal-ish at light load, but would drop significantly during long injector pulses (i.e. at full load, wide open). This would not explain the nasty idle.

In addition to the growing list of things to check, fuel pressure would definitely be something to look at if the other checks don't reveal anything else. If the regulator is stuck, the fuel pressure could be too high, which would result in lousy performance across the board. The O2 sensor should compensate though--and if it can't, there should be an error code.

My '06 appears to have a returnless system (unfortunately)... I'm not sure about the earlier cars. On systems with a return, you could check on the operation of the regulator by measuring the rail pressure with-and-without the vacuum line attached to the regulator. I guess those days are gone.

sauceman

It's a chain, and you don't have to replace it.

About the spark plugs, the engine sounded fouled, but never missed a fire. I've listened particularly for this.

sauceman

Good advice. I might have to do that anyway now, because when giving it a rough cycle today, I gave it a misshift as well, fro 3 to 2 instead of 4. I've estimated the RPM shot to 9400, based on the idea that 3rd is roughly 27% taller than second. The wheels locked temporarily and I hit the roof liner, but the engine kept on running smooth...

sauceman

I've driven a fair amount of highway today and yesterday, and the car's been running just fine, just like it used to. No blue smoke upon the cold startup, no stalling, great power delivery throughout the rev range, and no more black smoke than it would have done usually, that is, a little bit, which we deemed within spec after inspection and analysis.

I just don't know. Maybe the ECU had a fart or something, but the issues just straight-up disappeared.

Maybe I'll wash the back end and check it out in one week, see how it did.

I'll still get the compression and leakdown done though, due to the misshift.

sauceman

Thinking about it, before I left for the Rockies, I topped off with oil, but was in a hurry, so I may have overfilled it by maybe a 1/4 or 1/2 pint at worst. I don't know if this would be a sound explanation for the blue smoke upon a cold start, because I can't see how one day it would do it and not the other day.

Same for the black clouds, maybe, just maybe I've been driving too smoothly this summer and the soot accumulated inside the exhaust and was clogging it until my repeated cycles of WOT finally blew away the excess and let the engine breathe better?

sauceman

It's no worst or better than usual: 1qt/1000miles

curls

You hit the roof liner? That must have been funny at the same time as "oh shit what did I just do?"

How long were you at the uber-high rpm? Hopefully no damage.

curls

I'd look at changing the fuel filter if you haven't done it before... worth doing regardless of if its causing a problem or not.

Also, did you let the car sit the same amount of time, overnight, as you normally did when you were getting the sputter-start and blue cloud of death in the mornings? If so, then I really don't know why it'd be screwing up like that and then stop one day. Get the compression and leak-down test done at a garage or the dealer... just to see whats going on in there. Also, obviously, monitor the car for the next while to see if anything unusual happens again.

Just out of curiousity... have you been in contact with the dealership through all of this (starting way back when you realized it was burning oil like mine was) ? Just wondering what they've been trying as solutions, etc...

curls

Overfilling by 1/2 a PINT shouldnt do jack, but 1/2 a QUART might be cause for a small bit of alarm, although nothing major with the way you burn through it anyhow.

Have you ever heard of a product caleld Auto-Rx ? It's highly touted on www.bobistheoilguy.com and should clear up any soot, carbonization, varnish, and other internal problems that the engine is having. Might definately be worth looking into doing. Although, I believe it's only available in the US, but you live close enough that that shouldn't be a problem.

junktionfet

Sounds like maybe it was an intermittent electrical problem like a bad ground... Or maybe it was a mechanical component (sticky VTC pulley, fuel pressure regulator, sticking injector) that is now behaving normally.

At any rate, I'm glad it has cleared up, for now anyway.

JTso

iTrader: (2)

Strange problem indeed. I would hook up an OBD2 scan tool to monitor the vitals. Then do the compression and leak down to get a general idea of the engine condition and go from there.

sauceman

It barely spiked to 9400 that I was immediately on the clutch again.

Normally, the valvetrain should be good for such a high RPM, so no valves seem to have hit the pistons. Only, it's quite a stress for the con-rods.

sauceman

Yeah, I've been onto it with them since last year, but you know, since I've got so much mileage, they understandably won't do anything I'm not willing to pay for. They basically told me I was slightly below spec and I should worry about the rings, but that it wasn't a terminal issue for the engine.

I think it was Michael Wan who told me about Auto-RX, I guess I'll look into it next time I drive down in Vt. Hopefully I can find it at Autozone or something.

sauceman

Yeah, hopefully it won't be back. But somehow, I don't like the idea of an electrical problem, because it's often harder to pinpoint than mechanical.

sauceman

Yeah, I need to get that too..