I figured since today was the first decent day the NE's had in a while I'd take my hatch to work instead of the daily clunker. All seemed fine as I buzzed down the highway, and about after 20 minutes of driving I noticed some weird stuff going on. The car started bucking a little at part throttle but I thought nothing of it, figured it was the small adjustments I made with my vafc to "problem" areas I need to fix in my basemap in BRE. I let off the throttle, mash it for a second and it clears out a little. Then it starts again, only this time it's getting worse as time goes by. I glanced down at my temp guage and I see it start climbing up and that starts to worry me. I hopped off an exit and pulled into a gas station figuring I had a coolant leak somewhere (turns out I have a pinhole in my radiator too :P) and I noticed my rad hoses were swelling up pretty good. Strange, but whatever. I let it cool for a little bit, and I pulled my dipstick out...all of a sudden there was this burst of air pressure that smells thick like oil comes shooting out...wtf? I have an open dump pcv setup, hose comes off the breather box in the back and dumps to the ground and a filter on the valve cover breather. WTF is going on here? Could this be related to my overheating and bucking issue? The car drove home fine tonight, although I did have to take all my adjustments out on the afc which made my part throttle driving amazing in comparison. Anyone have any ideas? I'm not sure I want to drive it again until I get this figured out.

 

does your pcv have a large vacuum source?

 

There is no vaccum source...of course, there is no pcv valve on it anymore either. Just a tube that comes off the breather box in the back and points down. It's a vent to atmosphere setup.

On another note, anyone have the ngk part # for a spark plug for a b16 that's 1 step colder? I doubt those iridium tip plugs are helping me any and looks like a nice pointy heat spot for pre-ignition problems down the road. :P

 

Everyone always bashes on my pcv setups but its reasons like this I like it there. try driving it a little and see if it has pressure built up in it again.

 

i have seen this before it turned out to be a ringland being bad or the head gasket cant remember good luck with it

 

your motors fuct !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

old gas from sittin all winter maybe

 

dumbest answer yet

 

Well, here's an update so far...seems to be acting normal. Turns out I was quite a bit low on coolant for starters, about 2 quarts of water to bring it back up. Drove it around all day today and hasn't done anything like that yet. Only other thing I noticed today was my oil pressure was sitting at around 82psi in 5th gear on the highway, probably around 3600rpm. Smelled that oil smell again and the oil pressure dropped around 8-10psi to where it usually is when it's warmed up, and even on the way home tonight it seemed a little higher than normal. Seems like something's clogged up pretty good with my pcv setup so I'm gonna look at it tomorrow morning when I swap out to my colder plugs.
Compression is fine, tested it first thing this morning to make sure...coming in at 217 at the lowest number.

 

217 sounds like a carbon build up as well