wtf is this shiat?

wtf is this shiat?



carbon? what can cause this?

Not sure but when i blew the tranny in my car and it sat in my driveway for a month id start it up just to keep the battery charged and there was black deposits like that in the snow by my muffler.

When my car sat last year in the garage and I'd start it every so often, there was black shit on the garage floor right by the exhaust.

Could be... My friend's GT2 makes the same marks on his garage.

p.s.
you dont use paint very well

lol epic paint touchpad skills. its not my tranny because i got that replaced last hear...hmmm bad cat? i also noticed there is traces of it all over the back of my car.

Yeah i know it has nothing to do with the tranny im just sayin i had that stuff come out when my car sat undriven for a month. It probably has something to do with our oil consumption issues, or like you said a bad cat

i am having the same problem

no one knows what its from its not from oil cause its not oily at all

i think mine burns oil...but not enuogh to do that at idle...i think its a cat converter problem

Pretty normal for any car with some miles on it. Carbon (soot in the tailpipe) is the byproduct of the ICE - there will be quite a bit more stuff shooting out of the pipe, if you have any engine oil consumption or if you fairly light (don't get the revs up) and relatively short distances. Also used to be a sign of an overly "rich" fuel mix.

Note that this will still make it past even a good catalytic converter. The stuff is so fine, it will just blow right past. Once it cools and the exhaust speed drops off, it will start sticking to the pipe. After a little while, it can shed a little at a time or sometimes alot at once (read Seafoam treatment).

Just take it out to the highway and open it up - couple of hard pulls will help clear things out, at least until the carbon builds back up again.

hmm i normally have a 5-6 mile drive on the highway to the train station a day. and the day before today i took it for a dirve up in the mountains to test out my sway bar. hmm. maybe it is a rich fuel mix? is that bad?

also fish, i think my cat is going out...ive had a check engine light on for a week.

try cleaning the tips

STOP driving like grandma... Its not a problem, notice the white stuff on the ground. Its cold your exhaust is hot......Of yea clean the tips. lol....

i dont drive like a grandma...i am gonna clean the tips when i clean my car this weekend mostly dirty from snow.

someone correct me if i am wrong:
rich isnt too bad, other than probably causing damage to o2 sensors at the header and the cat
lean is the bad thing right?

how does one test for that anyway? I know my teacher's M3 has a gauge for it in his A pillar

you can buy after market sensors. im uploading a video of my "grandma" driving from the day before

Better to run a little rich than too lean. But a little - running way to rich (get puffs of dark smoke from the tailpipe - could choke up the engine, )2 sensors, and cat. not to mention some piss poor gas mileage.

As for the cat - if you keep getting the cold, could be bad. If you have significant amount of oil consumption for a period of time - eventually it will cake and penetrate into the inside of the cat and prevent it from self-cleaning properly. Then you'll get a persistant CEL.

A 5-6 mile trip should be just long enough to get the engine up to temp - but may not be quite long enough to burn of accumulated moisture and other contaminants. Might be time for a road trip.

thanks for the advice man you always have the goods. i might be taking a road trip here soon. should i reset my CEL before?

hey fish...what about ethanol in the gas?

my car also has an engine tick in it sorta at high-revs and i thought it was a rod knocking but i used oil additive and it didnt go away...i thought it was because of the ethanol not evaporating in my engine, does that sound resonable? what about exhaust smell when i romp on the gas?

amen to that.

Can't hurt to reset the CEL - that way you can see if the trip does anything for you, i.e. might go aff right away when you start, but may not come back or take longer to trip on the return direction. Gives you that extra bit of information to help diagnose the problem. Also track the oil usage - usually a car only drive relatively short distances and then run on a long road trip will guzzle motor oil, due to fuel contamination of the oil. Once it stops dropping - it generally will not use any more, unless you have mechanical problem like stuck rings or bad valve seals. Keep the crankcase filled up and you should be good to go.

As for ethanol in gas - I personally am not a big fan of it, but not much you can do about it. Most places have mandated some blending of gasoline with ethanol for consumer use. Lots of gas stations have a sign that says --% ethanol or mentions E-- gas. Most places use E10 (10% ethanol and 90% gasoline), some stations (mostly in the midwest) have E85 (85% ethanol and 15% gasoline).

Don't get me wrong, nothing wrong with ethanol as a fuel - it will still burn. It does produce less "greenhouse" emissions than regular gas, but has higher evaporative emissions than gas. Fuel economy wise - you will get less fuel economy with any mix of ethanol than with pure gasoline. With E10 - usually about a 2-3% drop, with E85 - you could be looking at 24-26% drop in fuel economy (assuming close to sealevel, gets worse as you go up). My beef is making everyone use it - instead of making it a choice at the pump.

Ticking noise at higher RPMs - hard to say without hearing it. The 1ZZ-FE is a pretty noisy engine - ticking at high RPMs could indicate a problem with the gas grade or the additives in the gas. Ethanol has a problem evaporating at certain temperatures - its lower power density and higher octane could cause some problems, especially at higher altitudes. I know it is a big issue with AVGAS in planes - as the ethanol (alcohol loves water), can cause water to separate from the fuel - not a good situation. In cars at altitude - can cause detonation - which is probably what you are seeing.

Have you had a chance to pull the plugs and take a look at them? Note any that looks significantly different that the others. Might have to play around with plug heat range and/or plug gaps to find one that works best for you. Also, the gaps should be the same for all of them - the 1ZZ-FE is pretty sensitive to electrical noise. Ground kits generally only help with audio equipment, but the 1ZZ-FE ignition system could actually benefit from one being correctly installed.

Other things that could be happening is carbon deposits in the combustion chamber and piston crown causing hot spots, valve clearance could be off, or not enough oil/oil pressure to the valvetrain.

i remember hearing about the evaporation problem with engines in denver, thats why i asked. is there a way i can burn it off during a road trip? i will post up pictures of the spark plugs today hopefully, my hanes manual doesnt say what alternatives are for the standard gap (i dont remember what it is, manual is in the car) what are some others i should try?


all my sparkplugs look like this



i know the stuff on the thread is anti-seize grease...but the white means its burning to hot right?

If those are bosch platinums.. theres your problem there..

here is a video....

http://files.filefront.com/12 11 08 car noiseAVI/;12626033;/fileinfo.html

you can also hear my wheel hub...or whatever it is...when i start moving the car and such. and when i get off the highway is the main noise ive been hearing

they are NGK somethings. got them at the toyo dealership

Yeah, those OEM NGK plugs are a pain to gap. You can replace them with a plain NGK or Denso Platinum plug or the newer Iridium plugs from the later Corollas. You have to use a special gapper (looks like an automatic wirestripper tool) or use a rod-style feeler gauge (looks like a collection of metal dowel rods on a keychain). The more common coin type gapper would be useless here. A flat-type or loop-type - might not fit enough to get a good gap reading.

That dual electrode design was to lengthen service lifespan. It will only make a spark on one side - regardless of how much power you pumped into the plug. As one electrode leg wears down, the other will start to be the preferred parking electrode. It will keep flip-flopping until the electrode wears down.

It does look like the gap is even, but the ground electrodes are worn down quite a bit. Hard to say for sure from one pic - could just be the angle of the image.

How many miles are on these plugs? Those should be good for 60K mile max - though I would check them every 15K and change at 30K miles to be safe. Did you run any additives in the tank recently, like a bottle of fuel injector cleaner?

The white stuff is from fuel additives - looks normal to me, maybe a touch too much additives - could be from the ethanol or oher oxygenates they add to the gas. If the plug was running too hot - the porcelain portion would have a shiny look to it (like it was clear coated). The coating on your plug looks pretty even - you can see where the flame kernel has evenly worn down both side of the plug - heat range look good too (look for the color gradient on the ground electrodes) as it is about halfway down on the legs. The top ring (base ring) has good color and it doesn't spread too far past the first turn of the thread. Overall - the plug looks good. If the other plugs all look like that - you don't have a major combustion issue (fuel or fire wise).

Note: Some people like to give their plugs a good scrubbing with a wirebrush - don't attempt to clean the plug in that manner - the metal residue left from the wires could cause detonation/misfires.

I saw the video - can't really tell. But I'll check it out when I get home and filter the sound a bit more and have better equipment to actually make out the sounds. Hard to tell with these POS speakers at work.

no i dont use any fuel additives just the 10% ethanol thats in all colorado gas pumps. if i had to guess they have about 30k on them so i should probably change them, they are cheap anyway. sorry the sound isnt that great i can try to better describe it... its hard to really hear it unless you are listening since the exhaust is really loud....the ticking like i said is when im exiting the freeway...and the noise from starting the car is at the stop light after i get off the freeway.

ill take a look at some denso plugs..i hear good things about them.

Also remember that during winter they put all of those additives in the gas to lower the freezing temperature. They do in Wisconsin at least. It makes my gas mileage go kapoosh!

i dont think they do here...it never really gets that low

It can also mean antifreeze is seeping into the cylinders (read: head gasket problem), but I doubt that's what it is in this case.

hm...tonight my exhaust smelt like unburned fuel...as in...it smelt like i was at the gas pump when i stood behind it in -15 degree weather

well guys. long story short.

i need a new engine.

uh oh... thats not good. whats wrong with it?