About a week ago I miss-shifted (sp?) while merging onto the freeway. It's a short on ramp so I was getting on it a bit and went from 4th to 3rd. RPMs shot past red-line and I immediately pushed in the clutch. I drove it home fine and to and from work the last week fine. But today on my way home from work (30 mile drive) while driving next to a dividing wall, I noticed my engine sounded funny. It sounds like there's an exhaust leak, like I would imagine it would sound if I didn't have one of the spark plugs threaded in.
Now, while waiting at a light a couple blocks away from my house, my engine started to overheat. While moving the temperature dropped to a normal reading, but I did have my heater blowing.
Nothing new.. I've been having an intermittent P0133(front o2 sensor slow response) and P0442(small evap leak - connector for charcoal canister is broken) Those codes come and go every couple key cycles, and as of now neither of them are being thrown. I checked for leaks and didn't notice any on the ground or anywhere else. I will check again after it sits for a while
Finally got the compression test done. 150's across the board (+/-1)
There is no oil in the coolant
There is no smoke coming from the tail pipe (sweet or not)
Cranked engine with rad cap off, no bubbles
Checked coolant while car was cold and idling and saw no bubbles.
I started the car up and let it idle for about 20 minutes, all was fine until the fans kicked in (car almost stalled) right after they kicked on it started to overheat again.
Are there any tell-tale signs of a bad water pump? I'm going to replace the thermostat soon, they're cheap enough to just do it.
Here are some pics of what the plugs looked like. Gaps were all over the place. They ranged from .020-.050
THIS PLUG HAD SOME BUILD UP ON THE GROUND ELECTRODE
Did you perform a leak down test? Leak down and compression tests are two different things.. usually what you would be worried about with a mechanical over rev would be bent valves, which often times a compression test won't show.. hence why I said leak down, not compression. A compression test is for testing the condition of the piston rings, which should be just fine.
Anyways, it does kind of sound like a bad thermostat (or water pump).. although it's not very common for them to fail.
No, I haven't been able to get my hands on a leakdown tester. I will get that done though, I'm going to throw the thermo at it and cross my fingers, but either way, whether or not that solves the overheating issue, A leakdown will be done.
for anyone that's interested, my overheating issue was a result of a bad thermo/low coolant. Turns out I had a slight coolant leak coming from the upper reservoir, it was spouting small amounts on the turbo so I never saw a puddle.
The noise I was hearing was due to a blown exhaust gasket, turns out my turbo bracket is missing a bolt, my tuner said that the misshift caused the exhaust to torque a bit, and seeing as my gaskets were a bit old/rusty they decided to give.