Importedpower

I have had my s2k set up in a garage for the last few weeks, seeing action once or twice a weekend, no real hard driving or anything. Today i drove it for about 45 min, parked it, then went to dinner, parked it, then went up to go home and one of my friends wanted to see what my car had, the interstate was empty being 2 in the morning and all. I had him wait till it was warm and i tested vtec once, it was driving for about 15 minutes before i hit vtec the first time. Everything was fine, it engaged fine, nothing out of the ordinary. so precursor out of the way. => what happened =>

I slowed down to about 20, in second we both took off, he has a ram truck of some sort, its auto. So i tore through vtec, hit third, i went to 85 in 4th and slowed back down, i took it about 500rpms short of 9k for both shifts. As i slowed down i noticed a few sparks trailing out of my exhaust, no smoke, no fire, just a few random sparks, its the first time ive driven it at night, with the top down, and ran it hard. Are these sparks normal? maybe ive never noticed?

Mods: Berk Header, Invidia Test Pipe, Skunk2 Exhaust with silencers in. So its an OPEN exhaust... so ideas? engine seems fine, runs fine, no shudders or anything.

ahrmike

no way for this to happen unless there was actually fire or unless you were scraping your exhaust on the ground.

chris_barry

My psychic diagnosis is you have a small exhaust leak letting air into the system on the over-run. This is igniting residual fuel. Do you hear any pops or crackles on the over run?

Importedpower

not lowered, and he said it was actualy just like little embers floating out of my exhaust pipe, he said not much but a little bit, i saw a few as i was slowing down and looked in my mirror to see how far ahead i was. they looked like sparks, but they kinda floated out and burnt out. I wonder if one of my gaskets, or my silencer baffling came up a bit and burnt off lol? ive googled since nothing is on the forum. And i DO have an exhaust leak. dunno where but i can hear it, and i keep retightening but it never stops so idk

my code reader says im running a little rich in vtec aswell, but everyone ive talked to said its normal

jimnasty23

well seeing you have a test pipe, i guess a bad cat is out of the question...im wondering if its the little catalyst inside your tp(doesnt invidia put a little catalyst in their TP?) thats getting super hott and melting do to you running a littlee rich...hmm not sure.

jimnasty23

well seeing you have a test pipe, i guess a bad cat is out of the question...im wondering if its the little catalyst inside your tp(doesnt invidia put a little catalyst in their TP?) thats getting super hott and melting do to you running a littlee rich...hmm not sure.

Squirtle

My buddys AP1 did the same thing the other night, which surprised me too. Just a little bit of sparks on the shift, nothing great. hopefully this thread will have some answers!

Importedpower

it has this little circle thing with a filter, its really a piece of crap, its supposed to be a "CEL" fix, but it doesnt work, i made my own. As long as my engine is fine, i dont really care much about the exhaust sparking... i read up online and they said:

-Could be old Carbon being blown off from the high temps under hard accel
-Piece of exhaust or silencer itself break off due to heat
-The Gaskets could possibly have pressed into the pipe path and been burnt
-Something about my rings being bad and shredding or breaking (doubt it?)
-excess fuel burning off due to exhaust leak and high temps

Anyone got any input? ever had it happen? Billman lol?

Edit: Oh yea, it was on shifts from what Matt said, maybe extra fuel shooting out due to the load dropping with clutch down, then igniting when it slams into next gear and shoots back up?

TestMonkey

This may be a long shot. But In my TP I have 2 non foulers with some steel wool in between them. If you have anything like that then the steel wool can be sucked out and look like embers. like I said its a long shot, but thought I would try.

jimnasty23

Ya everyone of these little things could be the cause. does it seem like the performance is worse or same as usual? if it were me, I'd take the tp off inspect the little catalyst inspect gaskets or anything little first, then let us know.