folex187

After an unsuccesful homemade pulle puller attempt today I decided to put the bolt back on and run the motor for awhile to heat things up and possibly expand the metal.

My car has not been started in about 6 weeks and has had no spark plugs in it for about 4 of those. After putting in 4 brand new NGK7173's I started it up. The car started very rough and struggled to maintain idle. It was pouring out smoke (hard to determine how thick and what color due to the 30' temps). The motor was bucking back and forth violently and the exhaust sounded like a it was an RX7. It was missing so badly that it was actually blowing smoke rings. After having a short heart attack, I waited for the wideband to warm up enough to give readings and it was showing maxed out rich.

I let the car run up to operating temps to see if it would stabilize but it continued and through 12 CEL's for Cylinder 1,2,3,4 and repeat misfires. After turning it off and taking out plugs soaked in gasoline I decided to throw my other plugs back in, reset the ecu, reset the injector scaling on the emanage, and give it another try. After doing so, the car ran back to normal and within about 20 seconds stopped the smoking.

The car now starts up fine and does not smoke but it only has a warm-up idle of 1500rpm instead of the usual 2000. Is it possible that I hydrolocked my motor with gas? I plan on doing a compression test tomorrow but I have a bad feeling that something is wrong.

hygiene boy

If you hydrolocked your motor it wouldn't be running it would be "locked", connecting rods are usually the first things to break. Good luck finding the problem.

Slows2k

sounds like it was flooded, not hydrolocked. If you are using 440cc injectors without the e-manage expect it to run exceptionally rich, rich enough to cause misfires and other fuel metering DTC's

folex187

I have the emanage controlling the 440's but I had to back off a ton of fuel pressure after taking out the emissions system. Even now the car will die right after I start it and then take a second to stop stumbling and maintain warm-up idle. I checked the plugs and they are black. I'm guessing the plugs are fouling?

brent_strong

Sounds like too much fuel. Black plugs usually indicate this.

Slows2k

If you are removing the SC and running the car NA, swap back to stock injectors and no e-manage.

mikegarrison

Yup, sounds like you flooded it.

LUVNMBRS

I had something similar happen to my old Prelude. My plugs were soaked in gasoline, as well. After I changed the plugs, the car ran fine.

I don't think you have to worry about hydrolocking your engine with gasoline. I don't think the injectors can flow enough fuel in one intake stroke to do this. Then any fuel in the chamber would be pumped out on the next exhaust stroke...but I could be wrong.