993 engine problem...

[Mike the mechanic]

Hi folks, one of my clients cars is a 1980 Sc in which I have installed a 1996 3.6. The client called me up and told me that all of a sudden, the car started to run rough and smoke both whitish blue and black smoke. I told him to immediatly stop the engine and wait for me to go there. I got there about 15 minutes later and when I started the car, it ran normally, and didn't smoke at all. I left it idling for about 5 minutes and it was ok, so I drove it back to my shop. It drove well until i got there, when it started to miss at idle and low rpm, it was running on 5 cylinders at low rpm but above 3000rpm, it ran fine, but smokes a hell of a lot. It smelled very rich and oily, so I figure the number 2 cylinder was just pumping oil and fuel. I checked the plugs, fouled but otherwise fine. I replaced them but still, cylinder number 2 didn't work. The engine is not making any knocking or ticking sounds. After about 5 minutes at idle, the smoke stopped and the engine settled perfectly. The number 2 cylinder started working again.

What can this be that it pumps oil intermitently? Very strange. Maybe the injector is sticking open and flodding the cylinder, causing oil to pass between the rings and cylinder???

[tshih]

Mike,

Does the 993 engine come with all onboard diagnostic and original wiring harness or is it converted to just run in an earlier car with the minimal electronic support or carburators?

Have you checked the distributor belt and rotors?

[Mike the mechanic]

I installed the 993 engine with all it's electronics, exact same way it was in the 993. Because this is a 1995 engine, it was much simpler to wire due to the fact that it's not OBDII.
Thanks

[Mike the mechanic]

Sorry, forgot to mention, I did check the distributors and belt. All is well in that dept, as I expected. The problem is intermittent and seems to affect one cylinder only.

[tshih]

Mike,

Your original posting said 1996 993 engine (which should have OBD2) but your reply said 1995 without OBD2. Since the earlier version 3.6L (1990-1994/5) for the 964 runs with the old air flow sensor with the mechanical flap and not the newer hot-wire mass flow sensor of the 993 and uses completely different software and associated diagnostic tools ($3000+ bosch Hammer versus the $10,000+ KTS500?) I would find out the engine # and acertain which engine you are dealing with. The older engine (964) series # start with 62XWWWW where X is the letter designating the model year and WWWW being the build #. So if X=T (1995), U(1996), V(1997), etc. Also sometime after 1995 the first two numbers 62 became 64 (993 engines).

The Bosch Hammer KTS300/301 can actually actuate each individual injector for you to hear or feel it's operation while it is mounted in the engine, as well as pull out the fault codes that the system ECU stores to tell you what could be the problem. If you need access to one you'll have to buy a reconditioned one from rwmotortec.com for $1500 or go to the local P dealership.

Same problem for the 993 engine but either cheaper or more depending on what you need to find out. There are cheaper software/Palm handheld readers out there to read error codes.

Good luck.