1997 Cobra Issues

[dville_gt]

My girls 97 cobra developed a stumble over the last couple of days. She had a coolant line blow off over the weekend that pretty much soaked all under the hood. I decided to pull the plugs to make sure the plug wells didn't get full of water, when I discovered the rear plug wire on the drivers side was really hard to get off, appeared burnt and the plug well had an old oilish looking tint but was not oily. The plug seemed to be in there really loosely so I'm hoping that might be the extent of the problem but as I'm not familiar with the mod motors I was going to check with you guys and see what you think.

Below are some comparison pictures to give you an idea of what I am talking about.


Edit, new problem, read my later post please.

[dville_gt]

[dville_gt]

[dville_gt]

This is a "normal" well for comparison

[dville_gt]

[Captain Crawfish]

using any coolant? run some sea foam through the IMRC's i guarnatee they are gunked up unless she drives above 3400 rpm all day long

[dville_gt]

Not using any coolant that I can tell. What is the easiest way to clean the imrc's? Any reason why it Wouk burn that plug wire. Think it might have just been a loose plug?

[SVT Lurch]

Easiest is to run a can of seafoam through the engine. You can get it at AutoZone. Suck it up through the PCV valve, let it sit for 15-20 minutes, then go beat the heck out of the car.

[dville_gt]

And the plot thickens pulled the plug on the front passenger side and it was dripping. The plug boot is dry though so it seems unlikely the fluid was in the plug well. Looking down into the cylinder I can see fluid in there, I pulled the intertia switch and tried releasing the fuel pressure at the schrader but only a trickle of fuel came out and when i cranked it with the plugs out it reeks of fuel. Since the car wasnt smoking or acting strange other than the stutter I cant help but hope that it is a leaky injector that is pouring fuel into that cylinder. While the plug was wet it did not look steam cleaned nor does the surface of the cylinder, just looks like wet carbon. I am attaching a picture, you can kind of see the fluid down in the cylinder. What steps would you take from here? Headgasket looks like it would be a major pita not to mention if it were leaking this much fluid it seems like it would be smoking like crazy, especially since this car has no cats.

[dville_gt]

I dont have a fuel pressure gauge that'll work with this rail, going to just pull the fuel rail and pressurize the system to see what happens. Looks like the upper plenum has to come off to get the rail off?

[turbostang]

James, I dont think I'd be overly concerned with the color of the plug wire, or the 'fluid' on the top of the cylinder - as this is common place with high mileage (anything), especially considering the overall appearance of the pictures, Hell, a lot of the fluid is likely to be resting in the plug well, or the top of the inktake valve etc. I'd be a lot more likely to do a COMPLETE tuneup on it and go with it and be sure to include a PCV valve, possibly clean the injectors. a stuck injector would be painfully obvious Id' think, especially on a stock car.

I'd do the seafoam thing, or maybe remove the intake and clean the IMRC's manually - aka powerwashing them. Seafom is NASTY business and your neighbors will NOT like you, search youtube videos for evidence of this. You'll see what I mean.

The coloration of the wire could be from anything, dry heat, sitting with water in there and evaporated and discolored the wire etc...I wouldn't be to concerend wtih that either. You may find a lot of 'bad' news that would have normally be unnoticed and the car would most likely operate just fine.

[dville_gt]

The catalyst for all of this was that at some point somebody used a plastic splice in the heater core line that finally got brittle and broke which spewed coolant EVERYWHERE. But prior to that she said that the car seemed to be very slugish and was sputtering. Once I replaced the hose and got everything filled up/bled the car felt normal. She then came home yesterday complaining that the car was still sputtering under acceleration and just not driving normal.

When I got to that rear most plug on the drivers side (the burned one) I figured that the plug might just have been loose or the wire might just be burned and arching. But then I got to that front passenger plug and it was literally dripping as I pulled it out. The plug boot was completely dry and I looked in each plug well to see if any of the coolant that was shot on the engine earlier might have gotten in there. So the fluid in the cylinder is definitly not from the plug well, it was already in the cylinder.

When I was cranking on the engine with no plugs it was shooting stuff out through the plug hole in the cylinder, no fluid really made its way up, but the mist/fumes shot me dead in the face as the engine cranked and it seemed like it had to be fuel, burned my eyes, etc.

Is there any way to pull the rail up enough to see what that injector is doing when the system is pressurized without removing the upper intake? How bad is it to remove one of these uppers? I see the gasket is $44 from LMR, are these re-useable? From the looks of it I'll need to pull the upper to get to the rail and at that point fuel injection connection sells a set of rebuild injectors for 140 and will buy yours back for 40. I am leaning towards the injectors since the car wasn't bellowing white smoke, no oil in coolant, coolant in oil, etc. I haven't done a combustion gas check on it yet, but the fact there was no pressure at the rail only minutes after I had been cranking on it leads me to believe it is loosing pressure through one of the injectors, FAST.

I know I asked like 50 questions there, but if anyone wants to throw in some input it'd be highly appreciated.

James, I dont think I'd be overly concerned with the color of the plug wire, or the 'fluid' on the top of the cylinder - as this is common place with high mileage (anything), especially considering the overall appearance of the pictures, Hell, a lot of the fluid is likely to be resting in the plug well, or the top of the inktake valve etc. I'd be a lot more likely to do a COMPLETE tuneup on it and go with it and be sure to include a PCV valve, possibly clean the injectors. a stuck injector would be painfully obvious Id' think, especially on a stock car.

I'd do the seafoam thing, or maybe remove the intake and clean the IMRC's manually - aka powerwashing them. Seafom is NASTY business and your neighbors will NOT like you, search youtube videos for evidence of this. You'll see what I mean.

The coloration of the wire could be from anything, dry heat, sitting with water in there and evaporated and discolored the wire etc...I wouldn't be to concerend wtih that either. You may find a lot of 'bad' news that would have normally be unnoticed and the car would most likely operate just fine.

[turbostang]

The catalyst for all of this was that at some point somebody used a plastic splice in the heater core line that finally got brittle and broke which spewed coolant EVERYWHERE. But prior to that she said that the car seemed to be very slugish and was sputtering. Once I replaced the hose and got everything filled up/bled the car felt normal. She then came home yesterday complaining that the car was still sputtering under acceleration and just not driving normal.

When I got to that rear most plug on the drivers side (the burned one) I figured that the plug might just have been loose or the wire might just be burned and arching. But then I got to that front passenger plug and it was literally dripping as I pulled it out. The plug boot was completely dry and I looked in each plug well to see if any of the coolant that was shot on the engine earlier might have gotten in there. So the fluid in the cylinder is definitly not from the plug well, it was already in the cylinder.

When I was cranking on the engine with no plugs it was shooting stuff out through the plug hole in the cylinder, no fluid really made its way up, but the mist/fumes shot me dead in the face as the engine cranked and it seemed like it had to be fuel, burned my eyes, etc.

Is there any way to pull the rail up enough to see what that injector is doing when the system is pressurized without removing the upper intake? How bad is it to remove one of these uppers? I see the gasket is $44 from LMR, are these re-useable? From the looks of it I'll need to pull the upper to get to the rail and at that point fuel injection connection sells a set of rebuild injectors for 140 and will buy yours back for 40. I am leaning towards the injectors since the car wasn't bellowing white smoke, no oil in coolant, coolant in oil, etc. I haven't done a combustion gas check on it yet, but the fact there was no pressure at the rail only minutes after I had been cranking on it leads me to believe it is loosing pressure through one of the injectors, FAST.

I know I asked like 50 questions there, but if anyone wants to throw in some input it'd be highly appreciated.

Is the car hard to start, like cranks over for longer than normal? It could be the fuel pump too - errr. the check valve in the fuel pump not holding prime. I doubt it though, not with the evidence of that one plug bieng wet.
Af far as the particulars on those engines, I'm not totally sure of it to be honest - maybe Paul can say for sure. I "think" the gaskets are resuable, of course, if they aren't damaged.

[dville_gt]

Is the car hard to start, like cranks over for longer than normal? It could be the fuel pump too - errr. the check valve in the fuel pump not holding prime. I doubt it though, not with the evidence of that one plug bieng wet.
Af far as the particulars on those engines, I'm not totally sure of it to be honest - maybe Paul can say for sure. I "think" the gaskets are resuable, of course, if they aren't damaged.

Ya, the car really didn't seem to crank any longer then normal. I know it is hard to see in that picture, but there was a puddle in that cylinder, enough so that I was not willing to chance a hydro lock by putting a plug back in it before I knew why the fluid was there. I have blown a handful of head gaskets and this doesn't match the symptoms of any of them, hell, she sat in stop and go traffic for an hour yesterday with the a/c on and the temp never got over 220* on a after market temp gauge (where the factory fans come on).

I've seen leaky injectors, but this seems to be a gusher. The engine was replaced 20-30k miles ago, but I believe they reused all the supporting pieces (i.e. intake/oil pan/fuel rails/ etc.) so in all likelihood the injectors may have 200k+ on them. I know we had one that wasn't working at all about a year ago that we swapped out, but it wasn't leaking, it just wasn't firing and causing the car to miss very audibly at idle.

[Diabolic]

Move that injector to another cylinder. If the same thing happens to the new cylinder "blowing out fuel", then you know that's the issue. If it's "gushing" like you said, then it won't take long to find out. Few seconds maybe???