3sgte sounds like lawnmower

[danny2]

well as the title states my 3sgte is sounding like a lawnmower/chugging

was running well but had a bit of a miss so i decided to get the injectors cleaned.. pulled them off and cleaned them and then put everything back together and it is now making a chugging sound like its missing on one cylinder, ive checked ... vacuum leaks, that everything is connected, spark.. but cant seem to work it out it sounds like an exhaust leak

anyone got any idea's?

[EldarO]

take the leads off one cylinder at a time, see if it changes the exhaust note or not (should stall on three of the leads) if it doesnt change, thas your offending cylinder thats dropped spark.

other than that, timing could be way out i guess?!

Elmo.

[ONCE-NA]

Did the injectors flow pretty equally after cleaning, I had this problem, couldnt figure out what was going on, then had injectors tested again and there was a 20% difference in flow between them! That fixed it ran fine!

[danny2]

thanks for the suggestion eldaro i'll give it a go tomorrow.. as for the injectors i cleaned them myself with an ultrasonic injector machine but unfortunately didn't have adaptor for toyota side flow injectors so i couldn't flow them.. also a guy here in canberra has told me that toyota side flow injectors off supra's and celicas shouldn't be cleaned.. he thinks that it wrecks them after a while..

[Andrew162]

I had this happen once before as well, it was a bit of water / moisture down one of the plug holes, between the lead and the plug. sounded like a WRX engine, being run on only 3 cyl's.

also have you checked your dizzy cap and rotor button, since this problem existed before you checked the injectors? it can give the same symptoms if the contacts in the dizzy cap have worn or oxidised.

[danny2]

car sorted itself out while it was running as i was pulling leads out.. i'm 99% sure it was water in one of the cylinders as it had not been running for about 3 weeks and there was quite a bit of water and white smoke coming out of the exhaust.. i think its got bhg or a cracked head..

i did also notice a tiny bit of milky oil on the oil cap, but oil is not milky at all so maybe some condensation in the engine? doubt it though.. i did clean it and then took for a spin and it was fine after..

also thinking a cracked block might be a possibility? as ive read a few places that this can be common on 3sgte when boosted.. is their any way of checking for this? also when i gave it a compression test a month or so ago it was excellent and all 4 were pretty much the same??

[Andrew162]

cracks in either the head or block can sometimes be a right bitch to detect. it will run fine like my last 3S-GTE did, but the temps rose fairly high and pretty quick after warm-up... does yours go past about 1/2 on the gauge? on mine there were no signs that anything was wrong, but the temps were rising very high after only a short time. turned out there was a minute crack in the head which got fixed up and all was fine again. my compression was about 195Psi across all four as well.

[danny2]

it does seem to run very hot and even after say a 10 minute drive you can hear coolant bubbling in to the overflow bottle.. not sure if this is normal for a 3sgte.. temp gauge is around half though.. and yeah my compression was around the 190 mark as well

[danny2]

also how did yours start when it was cold.. if left overnight mine will splutter or miss for 5 seconds or so and then idle up fine.. i'm guessing its a bit of water in the chamber

[Andrew162]

mine started up without issue. no steam / white smoke out the exhaust, seemed to run perfect in warm-up mode. the coolant bubbling I had as well when I first had the 3S-GTE installed, it turned out that the head gasket wasn't cracked but was one from an older model of 3S-GTE with a lot fewer holes for the water jackets.

also found this... could be of some help, similar symptoms as well.

[danny2]

thanks for the help andrew.. i'm pretty convinced that the head needs to come off so i can check it out but i might just drive it around a bit before to see how much coolant it uses and try and give the cooling system a flush as well.. don't like the look of pulling the head off though, look like a pain in the ass job

[Andrew162]

is it on a GT4 or an MR2? or something else? if it's a GT4 I empathise with what you gotta go thru to pull it all down.

glad to be of help.

[danny2]

its a gt4

[doobs]

I'm thinking you might have to remove the head

Sounds very much like the bhg's in the celica (3SGE), the second time, my sister ran it way to hot and warped/cracked the head... it would start fine, then heat up and barly run, sounding much like what you describe.

I hope for your sake im wrong... You should get a TeeKay test done...

[EldarO]

it does seem to run very hot and even after say a 10 minute drive you can hear coolant bubbling in to the overflow bottle.. not sure if this is normal for a 3sgte.. temp gauge is around half though.. and yeah my compression was around the 190 mark as well

BHG.

my 7M used to do exactly what your describing, head gasket was leaking in 11 places, even 5 seperate TK tests didnt detect it.

pull the motor out, dont bugger around with it in the car.

Elmo.