Dealership says new motor, thoughts?

Backstory: 70,000 original miles on ProTuned LGT Wagon. Has down, up, and intercooler. Tuned conservatively because its an auto.

 

Car every once and a while (maybe once a week for an hour or so) throughs a misfire code for cylinder 2,3, & 4.

 

Dealership checked plugs and didn't see any issue and wanted to do a top down test right away. Came back and said ringland issue and $6800 for a new short block.

 

Cylinder #1: 130 PSI

Cylinder #2: 120 PSI

Cylinder #3: 130 PSI

Cylinder #4: 130 PSI

 

I don't expect a 13 year old car to have amazing compression and clearly cylinder 1,3,& 4 have lost some but do you think a new short block is really the answer?

The car drives fine, I don't notice any loss of power. I also don't get on it that much. For a being ProTuned I do city driving maybe 20 miles a day.

 

My other dilemma is I was planning on selling the car in the next MONTH (of course my luck) because I need a SUV for my growing family. I plan on being up front with the buyer of the car about the issue but what do you think is a fair price for a car like this?

those compression numbers are actually pretty good. did they say if those were the cold or hot numbers?

 

it would be hard to image having cracked ringlands on 3 cylinders simultaneously, there is a misfire thread here I would recommend starting there. Plugs, coils, injectors etc

My car had 120, 120, 115, 100.

I still romp it... hard...

I don't believe new motor. Swap some coils and see if the misfired always happen on same cylinders?

Nothing wrong with those compression numbers. Check grounds and post a learning view.

fuel pump going bad maybe? or plugged sock on the bottom?

1. Shops knows what their doing, that’s why they keep up their business for something like your situation, Honestly I don’t like talking to a mechanic or their advisor makes me always nervous on what they say.

2. Good to be Honest with the buyer, nowadays a lot of seller telling lies to their prospect buyer so that they can sell their car soonly, I bought a car for $2,000 seller said the car was well maintained brakes new, tires ok, but there’s a binding issue which I didn’t know because I haven’t drive AWD before, so I take the bite and buy it, then suddenly I realize that there’s a lot of things to do with it, so I spent another $1,500 on it and now runs like a tank, my DD which always keep me smile on it’s reliability.

Take it to another shop. A good shop should run compression, leak down and then boroscope to confirm.

 

 

Nothing about what you said tells me that your ringlands are cracked. Does it eat oil?

 

When does it usually misfire? Mine did on really cold mornings only on #4. It was not down on power and it didn't eat oil. compression and leakdown showed that it was obviously broken.

 

When it's #2, 3, 4 I wonder if it's just the gaskets that need replacing.

Take it to another shop. A good shop should run compression, leak down and then boroscope to confirm.

 

 

Nothing about what you said tells me that your ringlands are cracked. Does it eat oil?

 

When does it usually misfire? Mine did on really cold mornings only on #4. It was not down on power and it didn't eat oil. compression and leakdown showed that it was obviously broken.

 

When it's #2, 3, 4 I wonder if it's just the gaskets that need replacing.

 

^^^^This^^^^

 

A compression test won't tell you much about the status of the ringlands. You can have good compression and bad ringlands.

 

Do a leak down test and that will give you a better indication.

Should the leakdown test be done warm or cold though? Or does it matter if you only care to check if the ringlands are shot?

All tests should be done warm, but let's be honest. By the time you get the engine cool enough to work on, remove all the equipment to get to the spark plugs, remove the plugs, then perform the test, the word "warm" is subjective.

 

I had a block heater on my car and plugged it several hours before in warm weather in to perform the test. The coolant was at about 100-110 degrees.

Backstory: 70,000 original miles on ProTuned LGT Wagon. Has down, up, and intercooler. Tuned conservatively because its an auto.

 

Car every once and a while (maybe once a week for an hour or so) throughs a misfire code for cylinder 2,3, & 4.

 

Dealership checked plugs and didn't see any issue and wanted to do a top down test right away. Came back and said ringland issue and $6800 for a new short block.

 

Cylinder #1: 130 PSI

Cylinder #2: 120 PSI

Cylinder #3: 130 PSI

Cylinder #4: 130 PSI

 

I don't expect a 13 year old car to have amazing compression and clearly cylinder 1,3,& 4 have lost some but do you think a new short block is really the answer?

The car drives fine, I don't notice any loss of power. I also don't get on it that much. For a being ProTuned I do city driving maybe 20 miles a day.

 

My other dilemma is I was planning on selling the car in the next MONTH (of course my luck) because I need a SUV for my growing family. I plan on being up front with the buyer of the car about the issue but what do you think is a fair price for a car like this?

 

How does the car drive ? does it feel like it has a miss ?

 

I'm guessing no. I also agree those numbers don't look bad to me.

I would say your cars is totally fine. they should of swapped plugs anyways just while they were in there and taken a close look at each coil and even test them... so I would recommend that (change plugs at the same time as your leakdown test which is good advice from above) if its been a while and then I would inspect each ignition coil at the same time and replace them as well as you see fit.

 

even though misfires on multiple cylinders are being logged there is a decent chance its only one of them misfiring in reality and you're getting false misfires on the other two.. basically one misfire could be throwing the other ones off giving false readings.. In the past I have had cylinder 4 being the actual issue and my logs showed it was cylinder 3 misfiring all the time

 

my assumption is there is a failing coil and its intermittent right now ...

 

 

a failing injector could also be the cause of misfires.. you should be fine once you figure it out. GL!