Extremely Poor Acceleration Engine Smoking

[WhiteOut]

Okay. The other night on my way home from a friends my car was idling really funny. The RPM's don't fluctuate too much and the check engine light doesn't come on, but the idle is unstable enough to cause the car to vibrate noticibly. Too add to this when you floor the gas just about nothing happens. Flooring it results in the kind of acceleration you would normally get from a 1/4 throttle acceleration (i.e it takes a half a mile to reach 45 mph at WOT). Transmission shifts during this time are what can only be described at positive, and very noticable, and the tranny doesn't seem to want to go beyond 2nd gear, although it will given enough time. In addition to all that something on the rear side of the engine is smoking, when the car is shut off smoke can be clearly seen rising from behind the rear side of the intake, it has a smoky grey appearance and smells a little like rubber burning.

 

Quite frankly I have no idea whats going on here. I've never heard of or seen a problem like this before, and I have no idea what could possibly be on the rear side of the engine thats causing it to smoke. Any help would be great.

[WhiteOut]

Could this be a clogged catalytic converter? I would say that its a possible EGR problem, but that would mean a valve or two is stuck open letting exhaust gas into the intake, and in that case the problem should go away as the car warms up since the EGR will be open at that point anyway. I guess I'll have to get a back pressure test done on Monday.

[4spdz34]

might wanna check your t-belt if you smelt burning rubber.

[WhiteOut]

Yeah, I thought about the timing belt too, but both it and the serpentine belt appear to be in good shape with no cracking or other defects apparent.

[Heza]

head gasket?

[WhiteOut]

God I hope its not a head gasket. I don't think it is though because there's no white smoke or coolant smell, and there's no trace of oil in the coolant or vice versa.

 

I wonder if it could be a fuel delivery problem?

[WhiteOut]

"Catalytic converters are defective when they become clogged or poisoned. You may sometimes be able to feel when a converter is partially clogged, or defective, when you do not go any faster when you step on the throttle. This may also be accompanied with a noticeable drop in gas mileage. A clogged converter will cause increased backpressure in the exhaust system. This increased backpressure prevents the engine from breathing properly which in turn may cause the engine to quit after a few minutes of driving or feel like an engine governor limiting the RPM's the engine can achieve. You may actually hear a whistling or choking sound when applying the throttle."

 

Kick ass. Got that off of a website, thats my exact problem. Bad gas mileage, rattling exhaust, and an engine that refuses to rev up while driving. I'll have the damn thing fixed tomorrow.

[cutsup1996]

catalytic converters don't go bad, something causes them to go bad. I just found this out recently. A converter should last the life of the car provided maintenance is kept up. Most of the time converters go bad when the car is running rich or lean or the O2 sensors are bad, or it has been struck by something under the car breaking the porcelain center.

[gp90se]

Cat converters CAN fail without notice for no reason, mine went bad just shy of 100k, never had any kind of running rich situation or anything, just started making noise and not functioning (smelled like exhaust out the mufflers, off it came for a while, bought a catco 5 months later, good as new.

 

-Jeff

[jeremy]

is your ebrake on? or caliper locked?

[WhiteOut]

catalytic converters don't go bad, something causes them to go bad. I just found this out recently. A converter should last the life of the car provided maintenance is kept up. Most of the time converters go bad when the car is running rich or lean or the O2 sensors are bad, or it has been struck by something under the car breaking the porcelain center.

 

Your absolutely right. Converters don't fail unless you feed something through them to degrade or block them. In my case I've been running on a bad intake gasket for 10k miles since I didn't know what the problem was and couldn't afford to fix the problem untill recently. After that was fixed I did a lot of intake cleaning using sea foam and aerosol injector cleaner through the upper intake. I'd guess that between the fuel problems from the bad intake gasket, and the carbon buildup being dislodged from the intake that the converter got plugged up good. I say plugged because there is no sign of rattling when the car runs or when you tap it with a hammer. Thus I'm guessing that the ceramics are still intact but airlflow is being impeded by carbon buildup.

 

In fact when I brought the car in today the buildup was bad enough that I was getting detonation inside of the converter (sounded kind of like hitting a hollow metal object with an aluminum bat) from the extreme temperatures being reached. This resulted in the converter glowing like a fireball after only five minutes of the car being run.

 

So, my advice to anyone who has an intake gasket leak. FIX IT!!! NOW!!!

[cutsup1996]

glad your problem is fixed, motor on man, glad you knew what I was talkin' about. I never knew that about converters either until this muffler shop mechanic told me all about it and then gave me a website to check what he was saying is true and it was, the converter should last the life of the car, problems with the motor or the converter being struck outside will lead to a faulty converter, many people never know that and many mechanics don't tell people that so they can get more money.