kmcc78240

bump any updates

em3e3

Someone mentioned having the valves done, and with the mileage you have, I second it. Plugged injectors will also cause it to feel like it's missing, but usually goes away after warm-up. If you haven't already done a compression test, do it for all cylinders. Then hook-up a vacuum gauge, following the instructions in the FSM (online at http://personal.utulsa.edu/~nathan-b...fsm/index.html).
That should provide more detailed info that should point to a specific problem.

Schump

my friend's original conclusion was right....$50 @ the junkyard got the igniter that the dealer wanted like $350 for, or the best was advance auto for $288 warrantied.
that was the problem. think the cold start injector sensor is bad too, but I'm irked....
only got 12.3 mpg last tank...180 miles. granted, i usually have a heavy left foot, and I've turned my idle up cause my oil pressure gets low once it warms up. what REALLY bums me out is i kind of blame myself...
could my truck having too low an idle for too long and me not knowing how to adjust it cause it to have kind of low oil pressure @ 700rpm when warmed up?
now it's idling like a racehorse, but still same symptoms. i turned the idle screw down but it starts at sometimes 1600 rpm. what's weird is sometimes it will drop to about 250 rpm when warmed up, but if i blip the throttle and talk to it nice, it will sometimes return to a kosher 800 or so.
so i have a few ?'s...
should i run a straight weight oil due to the lower oil pressure once warmed up? (my Porsche 914 did the same thing....60-70 psi when cold w/ 10w40, and only about 18 psi when hot. granted, that's a high volume, low pressure system in the 2.0 type 4 V Dub engine, but are these the same symptoms?)
and if i went to straight 30 weight instead of Castrol 10w30, would it help?
i plan on going back to running Amsoil 10w30 or some flavor of Amsoil since it's GREAT oil, but i still have 10w30 Castrol in it for now...
153.3k on the motor
once i replaced the igniter, it was firing on all 6, no more black smoke out the tailpipe.
anyone? Buehler....Buehler....
now keep in mind, i want to keep this block for a LONG while since i put a Centerforce clutch on it in CA...ok, actually the shop i worked at and got fired from the morning i shattered my femur that same afternoon did @ 136k, but i was PLANNING on doing it myself Tuesday, aug 23rd, 2005.
that and i'm going to put the '92-'93 24v Camry heads on it, and either then or later, arias pistons and Carillo or other rods
and u know me....i love boost, but that's a while from now.
i'm getting a $500 jetta 2 GLi (1990) tonight and gotta get it insured and do a little bit to it first. ends up i'm joining my old hot shoe racing teammate Glenn on his drive down to gilmer, TX for the AMA enduro national this weekend , driving all night tonight or tomorrow night, depending on the developing weather pattern and whether or not he can get a baby sitter for tomorrow...
we should be driving back monday morning==>tuesday morning, back in the DC area then. but i can knock off another 2 or 3 states out of the 13 i have yet to be in....TX, Louisiana, and OK.....
...yada yada and be4 i get into the motor of my truk, i want to put a locker in the back since it's cheap extra traction.
mark my words, i said thsi shortly after buying Sluggo The Mule (my truck!) i WILL get 500k out of him....
thanx a lot, yall have been a helping hand in the past... no trouble codes thrown now, i have paper clipped it recently and the "new" igniter fixed it

jht3

why do you think you need high oil pressure at idle?

just run 5w30 in your brand of choice. the 5 will ensure proper lubrication on cold starts, and the 30 should be sufficient for lubrication when the engine is hot. straight 30 is a bad idea as it will be like honey on cold mornings...not good for your engine. you can't compare this engine and it's oil requirements to the air-cooled engine in your vdub/pcar.

i would check the engine timing, clean out the idle valves and intake chamber w/ carb cleaner, check for vacuum leaks, and reset the idle to spec. i'm assuming your plugs are gapped right, your cap and rotor are intact, and your plug wires aren't frayed?

Schump

the oil pressure is fine when cold at idle. i like my old VDO gauge w/ #'s..but i guess that's cause i'm an engineer. a gauge that reads "low" and "high" and has 2 marks between just annoys me at times, oh well, i'm not going to re-engineer the dashboard!
when the motor warms up, it is below the lower line on the ambiguous gauge unless the idle is at about 1000rpm or more. just sometimes the engine decides it's going to have a lumpy 250 rpm idle, so i sit there tapping the gas a bit to keep it up so it won't have uber low oil pressure. is that worthwhile or not? and if i blip the throttle hard a few times, sometimes it'll return to a nice, even 800 rpm idle. i'm not sure why, but i'll figure it out soon...

now you said run 5w30. the haynes manuals are always somewhat vague about what oil to run, or they just give you the chart w/ 3 or 4 different weights.

for some reason i've always thought this motor was designed to drink 10w30.
am i right or wrong? and if that's so, i would think 5 weight would be too thin for the viscosity needed, film strength, etc on the bottom end bearings.
i know most all newer (~10yrs old or less) jap motors require 5wX but that's i thought due to the fact that newer engines are built w/ tighter tolerances, and the lower weight oil will work fine in the very small spaces btwn the bearings and rods and crank and stuff. that and of COURSE lower weight oil makes the corporate boys happy as their C.A.F.E. (corp avg fuel econ) goes up...duh, lighter oil = more HP @ the crank vs heavier.
so I did reset my timing. it was orignially about 14 degrees. i set it back to 10. now it seems my butt dyno is telling me the truck doesn't pull quite as hard as he used to.

i did get better fuel economy last tank, though. when i bought it spring break 2001, two days later i drove like 650 miles from DC to savannah georgia for a SCCA race my best friend was doing @ reobling road. it got 18.2 mpg then w/ 90k on the clock.
i've only been getting about 240 or 245 miles out of Sluggo lately, pretty sure it's a 16 gallon tank.
last tank i was wringing the tank out like a wet rag! i told my friend "yo, i needed gas yesterday!" and he didn't know how urgent that meant.-he was ahead of me w/ my canoe on his dakota last sunday leading me to a good paddle/fishing hole...
so i made it 263 miles and nearly coasted into the 7/11 had a WHOLE 0.12 gallons left in the tank, hoooo aaaah! that's sooo far... like 1.6 miles or so!

as far as the idle goes, i already ran 2 cans of the amsoil engine foam stuff through the intake, it seemed to help a bit. i still have one left, but don't want to use it as it screws up your plugs and i've already replaced (after regapping to spec, they aren't right out of the box) all the plugs, the cap, and rotor.

I will also figure out where the idle valves are and clean them out..hope it's in haynes, never dealt w/ these particular thingies yet... and take a can of carb cleaner and my ear to check for vacuum leaks.
I have a strange feeling that it's my thermo time switch sensor, aka the 2nd coolant temp switch on the back of the motor hidden under the intake manifold you can barely see that controls the cold start (7th) injector.
i'll have to re-read this whole page tomorrow for symptoms and solutions, but i seem to remember i pulled the 7th injector wire and it did what someone here said it would do if the sensor is bad.
the dealer wants $144 for the ☺☺☺☺er! well, i might have a job there again soon? so it'll be a lot cheaper....and i can get it at 20% off on the other side of the counter at the back door wholesale desk anyhow.
that or pull one off a motor in a junkyard if tony will give it to me cheap enough.
i need a locker, a new bed (mine just has too many dents in it now!..but it's a truck, so it's supposed to...and now i don't care too much if it gets another one) ok that and better mpg...camry heads will fix that, turbo won't. that and my $500 jetta will as soon as i register it and put a new windshield in it.
thanks for the help guys,
Dave

mt_goat

That's what mine says on the oil filler cap

Haynes manuals suck. Try this one Dave:
http://personal.utulsa.edu/~nathan-b...fsm/index.html

Schump

Thanks Mountain Goat,
that's killer to have that manual all online. only thing i wish it had: an index!
that way i could look up randomly ambiguous parts which i might know what they are called, yet don't know "technically" what part of the car they are spec'd in.... is that the big huge factory manual?
i don't know why, i've always kind of liked haynes, except they f'd me over once. prob. cause i like them better than chiltons and cause they tear down and rebuild the car when the make the manual. maybe cause that's what came w/ my 914 in 1994 and i prob. read cover to cover over the years of rustoring/modifying it, and so that's what i got for my truck as well. but shoot, their drawings at times look like they were done by 3 year olds...what the F??? what the H*LL are they trying to make me think that is???
that and the brits who did my 914 manual misread the german 1 letter labels on my fuel pump....it had an in, out, and overpressure relief out, 3 nipples on the pump. they go and read the german letters in english. so, I spend all saturday taking my gas tank out, redoing the fuel lines correctly and putting the tank back in the car and gas back in (i had prob. 8 gallons in a trash can with a liner in it, took forEVER to let the pump run and empty the tank!) of course, the car ran pretty good before i went and fixed what they cause me to f up, but i'm a perfectionist, besides, i had a track day the next day at summit point w/ the PCA, so i wanted it to be as perfect as it could... the primer looked good when i shot it, but the PCA hated it and i wish i had finished painting it anyhow... so, now this is turning into another Encylopedia Schumptanica...sorry, NEVER should have taken typing in h/s!...when i put thu tank back in after dumbarse mr. haynes screwed me up in the 1st place, i left a few tools on the ledge where the fuel tank sits on a piece of felt...car is 24 yrs old at this point...felt keeps moisture in it, holds it against bottom of tank..... so my screwdriver and/or plairs poked a few pinholes in the rusty tank bottom, i left for winchester VA from VT where my Formula SAE teammate lived and i was going to crash sat. night... i fill the car to the brim w/ gas @ the truck stop 12 miles north on 81, smell the gas, take off the steering rack cover and inspect the pump, hoses, clamps, and Y fitting...well, no leaks i can see, it's coming from somewheres up on the tank that i can't get to w/o removing that damned tank...AGAIN...all my hose clamps are tight...BARRRGH!!!

so i speed up I-81 late night trying to get to winchester before i run out of gas....get a wreckless speeding ticket somewhere around staunton, realize on the way that as long as i have 3/8 of a tank of gas or less, i can't actually see the gas gauge going down... so i get to vic's house round 12:30am, go to super wal-mart (thanks for being open 24hrs!..and thanks to the INFAMOUS JB Weld for coming out with JB Quik a few months previous!) stay up all night, get to the track at 8:20am or so, i'm the last car tech'd. i had plenty of adrenaline in my veins on the track, but for SOME reason i slept through most of the classroom stuff that day
yeah...."drrrrrr miyh nayme iz FRANK!!! durrrr! that cap must have been where i got the idear that my ol' gas thirty but yet torqueless 3vze likes to drink 10w30! Check out thu big BRAIN on BRAD!!!
so i'm still wondering, should i switch to 5w30 synthetic next oil change or stay w/ the recommended by Mr. Toyota himself 10w30?
time to grab my manual out of the back seat of my truck and figure out what an idle valve is...

kmcc78240

I am oulling 16 MPG and using 10w 40. Before my HG and tune up I was pulling close to 18 MPG of course my foot has been a little heavier recently. With the south Texas heat should I run 10w 30 I know that is what the cap says, but I feel like the thicker the better in this heat. Wjat do you think?

jht3

you can run 10W30 or 5W30. FWIW, I had my truck in at the dealer getting the steering recall done and they put in 5W30. oil is better now than it was when our engines were designed.

yes, new engine clearances are tighter and you'll see all manufacturers now calling for 0w and 5w, but even old engines can benefit from that. the second number is the hot viscosity, and 30 is just fine for our engines as we aren't reving them to redline constantly. Increasing the pressure while using the same oil will increase the oil flow but increasing the pressure by increasing the oil thickness will result in less flow. It takes more pressure to move a thicker oil. When you go to a thicker oil the pressure goes up because of the increased resistance, and therefore reduction of flow.

in my track car i run an ester-based premium synthetic in either 15w50 or 10w60 b/c the bearings need it when spinning at 7k+ rpms and over the 212*F that is the normal reference point engine designers use. if i could find a premium synthetic in 0w50 or 5w50 i'd run it, but it isn't made. Castrol Syntec, Mobil1, Pennzoil, etc are not what I would call "premium" and are actually barely synthetic

yes, the pressure gauge on our cars sure does suck but it's better than no gauge like on my m3. what does your gauge say at 3k rpm on a hot engine/oil?


as for retarding your timing back to 10*, of course this is going to impact your butt-dyno. for the most power, you advance the timing to the point of detonation, then back off a bit. however if you go too far, your knock sensor will kick in and take away timing

Schump

As far as oil pressure at 3000 rpm and when the motor and oil are all warmed up, it's pretty good, but it has gone down since i got the truck (64k ago)
now my needle hangs out a little below the line on the right side of the gauge where the ambiguous H is on the right side. i seem to remember there are 4 lines in the gauge, and i shall call them:
"really low, shut it off you idiot!",
"on the low side of OK, cool for idle, you know, on the right side of the "L",
"good and high pressure, but not too high, just plain kosher, just to the left of the "H" and
"WAAAAY high! wtf? are you running 80-90 weight gear oil in your motor, or do you just have some huge wad of metal/gunk plugging one of your passages? again, shut er down!"

now I can't remember the difference btwn detonation and knock. there's also pre-ignition and maybe one other no no in the world of IC engines...been 9 years since I sat in front of an engine dyno all day and all night...
one is when the advance is too far advanced and the fuel/air mixture ignites before the piston reaches TDC, and this knock tries to force the piston back down, making the crank go the wrong way.

as far as oil goes, i know most of the off the shelf major label stuff is just plain Crap Salad! I know that back in the day, Mobil 1 used to be a better oil, but that was 10 or more years ago when it was the only major label on the market. People in the Polishing Club of America and others have told me that their oil took a major step down in quality at some point (it's too much big business...if it costs them 2c less per quart to make it...the big cheeses get much bigger bonus cheques at the end of the year...) fwiw, i did go to a polishing club of america meeting where one of the engineers or reps from mobil came (their HQ is only 20 minutes from my house) and showed charts from a test with other synthetics "ambiguously labeled" P, Q, and i don't remember what else. Can't remember if the test were performed by Mobil or an independent lab...
Just the same, I spoke with the owner of a decent Porsche race team about Mobil 1 and he said "man, it's crap! i've had several bad cases of Mobil 1 and they've eaten too many motors. I know you won't believe me, but now I run off the shelf Kendall oil. It's cheap but it's really good oil."

I run Castrol because, well, that's what my dad has always run.

If I had to guess you're running the uber expensive Motul in your M3. just that's what my friends barry and james use at their BMW race/street/shock shop, road race technologies. I seem to remember it's like $50 or $70 for 4 or 5 liters...the top of the line motul, anyhow. Yikes! I know they had 3 flavors of it though, reasonably priced, kind of expensive, and uber$$$.

I have always liked Amsoil simply for the fact that a guy at my sailing club told me he got 330k out of his 1980's chevy citation. (never opened up the motor.) That coupled with the fact that GM cars of the '80s weren't exactly crem de la crem says something quite good about Amsoil.

I also like ALISyn, from Ohio. I met them at SAE congress in Detroit in 1997 and they gave our Formula SAE team a free case of their synthetic 15w50 as well as some really good synthetic stays on your chain but doesn't attract dust chain lube. They showed me tests and pointed out that their film strength was 3 to 4 times that of Mobil 1, and thus allowed anyone who wanted to run a thinner oil and still have adequate bearing etc protection, and get extra hp from the thinner oil (less parasidic loss)
ALI= Aerospace Lubricants Inc. They mainly make oil for jet turbines, but also make all sorts of car and truck and motorcycle oils, greases, etc.
i think their lube is like $10 or $11/quart now, but for us, it was free! They mailed us several cases the next year so that we could test it on the dyno and get back to them w/ hp & torque vs. oil weight, but i think the oil was delivered to the professional shop across the hall and for some reason didn't make it over to our shop???
That and i remember one of their engineers telling me "don't worry about the 1st # in viscosity... the 2nd one is the important one, the hot visc."

Mt Goat, I just think that if you run 5w it won't have the film strength and such to do what it's supposed to when you start up your engine, and when it's still warming up. I know oils have gotten better over the years, but is the current 5w30 comparable to the 10w30 of 15 years ago?

If you still want an oil pressure gauge in your M3, it's an afternoon fix. Get a A pillar gauge mount and the small VDO gauge. VDO also makes an electronic sender w/ 3 connectors on it such that you can still keep your idiot light functional. I wasn't sure when I put an oil pressure gauge in my 914 so i T'd the oil pressure line and kept the OEM idiot light but I would guess that since it's all made by VDO and they've been around forever and a day, the newer sender w/ the gauge voltage and idiot warning post would work w/ your VDO M3 gauge cluster. To make sure, you can always call them, their factory is in Winchester, VA (my friend used to work there...that's how I got my gauge and sender!)

If you decide to put a o/p gauge in your M3 and need help or parts, here's Road Race Tech's info:
www.roadracetech.com
what model is your M3? I love the original E30...barry the co-owner of RRT has 2 of them, both silver, and they're growing like weeds behind their shop, i think I counted 7 or 8 M3's at the shop last time i was there and at least 4 E30 M3's.

mt_goat

That wasn't me that said that, and I agree 5w is too thin for around Oklahoma anyway (we don't have much cold weather here), I like to run 10w30 myself.

jht3

holy ☺☺☺☺ you write a lot!

at idle, my gauge is damn near maxed out on the left. it's been this way for YEARS! so it can't be all that bad right? my engine doesn't burn oil and my pressure seems to be OK when under load. i mean to do an oil analysis one of these days


thanks for reminding me about the cost of Motul. my last oil change and brake fluid flush cost me $90!! and yes, i have an original m3 in black and am good friends w/ barry and james. maybe we've met? i'm well known around the shop for my "coolant lake" incident

jht3

why do you say that? both 5w30 and 10w30 have the same thickness at 212*F. the difference is at 75*F, the 5w30 isn't as thick and will flow better. it is even thicker below 75*. does it get colder than that in Ok? i think so

but i dont claim to be an expert at this. what i've said is how it was explaiend to me by someone who should know.

mt_goat

I've found that the low pressure reading on our gauges is either a sender problem or a gauge problem, and I'm guessing a sender problem. I say that because my gauge read low too at idle and at 116,000 miles I swapped in a 2001 engine with 27,000 miles but kept the old sender (original 93 sender). The pressure readings stayed the same after swapping motors.

mt_goat

Well I'm no expert in this area either, I guess in my mind it's the cold starts that worry me more than the normal operating temps.

When you mention (or someone did) that Mobil 1 isn't as good as it used to be, what about that new M1 they have now that sells for a little more?

JEBSR5

God almighty, can't believe you would even speed in Virginia, much less around Stauton the speed trap!

JEBSR5

Not sure about you guys, but isn't the IAC valve (idle air control valve)there? Contols idle speed, coolant warms that up and reduces the idle speed.
Filled with a thermowax that expands/contracts and allows/reduces idle speed.

jht3

Mobil changed the formulation recently when they also rebranded their oil "5000 mi", "7000 mi", etc. i now no longer run the 15w50 in my race-bred m3 motor. for your everday running around, their synthetic is probably OK and I may switch over to it in my toyota (still running dino oil in it) as synthetic "sticks" to the engine surfaces better

Schump

I quoted a few other Porsche club members, but that was back when my 914 didin't look like a 1900 lb. chunk o swiss cheese! let's see, only time i weighed it, the last time i've been on the track myself and not a paid wrench on formula cars was july 1998 @ watkins glen, and it was 2030 lb. w/ a full tank. I think i have since removed a bit more crap and our BEST friend, good ol' Fe2O3 has taken away another 20+ lb, and that's w/o beating the crap that's barely hanging on out!

last time i was in the PCA was i think 1999 or so, and that is what several PCA'ers as well as mechanics told me that [now waaay] back in the day, a few years previous, Mobil 1 had gone from great to good. I don't know recently, though. We used to run it in our turbocharged, fuel injected CBR600F3 in the 15w50 weight and never had a problem, and redline was 12,000rpm (the electromotive coils couldn't keep up w/ the crank at that point, plus choked flow in our measley 20mm restrictor pre-turbo made it run out of air too. those SAE bastards! why couldn't we run 610cc's unrestricted???? ok, so 150hp in a 475 lb. car could get a bit dicey....our 620 lb tank aptly named MEAT pulled 1.5 G's on the pad, toooo fun 2 drive.
back in the day...
anyhow, if it matters to anyone we ran the 1550 instead of the 1040 because of the turbo, it got the oil extra hot!...hindsight says we should have run a post turbo bearing oil cooler as keeping that monster cool was difficult at times...
hope that helps?

and do yall think i should run what mr. toyota etc tells me to run on my cap 10w30 synthetic, or 5w30 synthetic. climatewise, i'm in northern VA, about 15 miles due east of washington DC...we get snow at times in the winter (only 4 or so times this winter, not enough!, and also get 100 F days w/ 100% humidity and 2 knots of breeze in august...thank you, mr. potomac river!

mt_goat

You may have been more up on this than I was, Gadget likes 0W30 here:
http://www.customtacos.com/forum/showthread.php?t=78789