leaving work tonight...about half an hour ago, i get in the car and start to pull off out of the parkin lot. almost got the the exit when all of the sudden my check engine light comes on and about 5 seconds later there's a loud popping sound that lasted for about a minute. sounded like an open header or something, kinda like that. just one cylinder though. so i kinda don't like the way that sounds, obviously, so i reverse back into a spot facing some light so i can get under my hood and see if i could locate anything, and i couldn't see anything by myself. not long after, the popping stops but the engine is rocking like it's off balance, i.e. a cylinder not firing. also the lack of power and the service engine light isn't appealing either.

earlier this week i did notice a clicking...something valvelike. very indistinct though.

what am i in for? my main concern is about the popping sound and why that happened...and why it stopped after a few minutes. didn't happen on the entire 2-3miles home.

i obviously can't do anything tonight, i'm just thinking it's valve related.

all in all i'm just trying to solve the lack of power and the "rocking" engine. it's pretty much exactly the same thing that would happen if you unplug one of the sparkplugs. i don't know. i just hope it's not too complicated.

thanks all
-mike

 

Hmm, that's odd. If you have a 95-97 year car, do the keydance to get some codes. If it's a later year, you'll have to go to autozone and have them read the code(s) for you. It may be a cylinder or the plugs/wires/cap could be bad too.

 

pardon my ignorance but i have read somewhere the keydance won't work on a 98...i tried it and maybe i'm just not doing it right...but ON-OFF-ON-OFF-ON right? nothing happens.

so...if it was a plug/wire...that wouldn't cause that loud popping, or shouldn't in my mind. i don't know. just the initial popping noises have kinda thrown me off from believe plug/wire/etc...

edit:
so starting the car up a minute this morning and it's burning something...smells kind of plastic-ish and the smoke is coming from under the intake manifold. ugh. what could it be?

 

mine smoked and smelled real nasty like that once it was the ground wire from the intake the the chassie check that when mine did it my whole card died and wouldnt start took me awhile to find it just used some stinger wire to fix it..



Joe
95es

 

Have you pulled your plugs and checked each one to make sure they are ok also you might want to do a compression check on each cylinder just to make sure none of your valves contacted the piston, it might be a bad ground wire causing the engine timing to advance/retard to much and causing the knock sensor to trip the check engine light. Hope some of this helps.

 

You're correct, it's 95-97 It's corrected and I have a how-to on the keydance in the FAQ section of this forum.

 

but that wouldn't cause the initial popping sounds, would it? i'm gonna head to autozone tomorrow and get them to pull codes...just to get an idea. for example, i'm fairly confident a cylinder misfire is going to be in there, and that will give me an idea of where i can begin...examining. cause i don't want to have to take my intake mani off if i don't have to. =]

 

well...cylinder 3 misfire...atleast it tells me which one it is.

edit:
fixed now.

once i got the intake manifold off, sure enough it was obvious which one cylinder 3 was. the spark plug wire looked as if it had shot out and it was in pieces...sprayed oil all over the bottom of the intake manifold. the spark plug itself was also in pieces...luckily i think i recovered all of them and kinda pieced them back together and make sure none of it fell down into the cylinder. replaced those two things...and everything's workin fine now. however there's an on and off valve clicky noise, it gets louder every now and then but it's not a 'bad' sound. oh well. i'm just glad it's fixed now.

however i'm completely baffled at how something like that happens...