No start, No turning over by Hand, Engine Failure?

Hi all,

 

First off, i have done a few hours of forum searching and so far have not come up with a good specific scenario that answers the questions I have about my current situation. If there are any similar or relevant threads I have missed please let me know, and I apologize for missing them.

 

I have a 05 Legacy GT Sedan, it is stage 2 OTS Cobb tuned with all specified mods, otherwise stock. It has about 215000 KMs and is up to date on all major maintenance.

 

I drive the car daily and haven't had any engine troubles besides a miss that ended up being a bad injector. Today I had the car out for a short drive and all was well. About a half hour later I came out back out of the house to run another quick errand and oddly enough the car wouldn't start.

 

The car cranked fine, so I tried staring a number of times until it suddenly stopped turning over. The lights seemed to dim while starting so I figured bad ground or dead battery.

 

I changed a bad ground cable and removed inter cooler and checked all cables to starter and cleaned the battery terminals. I also hooked up booster cables and tried again to crank car over. NO luck.

 

I next removed the starter and checked its operation using booster cables. The starter spun and threw out fine. I also noticed a significant amount of fuel in the intake pipe from the manifold to inter cooler when I removed the inter cooler for the second time. I haven't seen anything like that before and I'm not sure exactly where that much fuel would come from.

 

Now being worried, I'm wondering if the car has blown a timing belt or had some sort of valve failure, causing the car to not start and no longer turn over. I put a socket on the crank pulley and I am still not able to turn the engine over past a specific point. It moves freely in either direction except past that specific point. I even made sure the I didn't have the car in gear like an idiot.

 

It seems very odd to me that I could experience engine failure when not driving the car. Call it lucky or unlucky if that is the case. I am looking for any advice on something I may have missed or further diagnostics I could try before tearing off the timing belt cover or removing the engine. Tearing it further apart is not ideal where it is as I usually work on the car at my dads 10 minutes away. That being said, the car seemed pretty screwed now.

 

Any help you smart people can offer is greatly appreciated. Thank you all in advance!

Pull the spark plugs. Does fuel come out? Does it turn over then or is it possibly hyrdo-locked?

Hmm, that's a good thought. Ill make sure to do that first thing in the AM. I wonder if its possible to have a fuel injector stick open, enough that if when the fuel system primes for starting it just dumps fuel into the cylinder. Ill keep you up to date. Thanks!

Take your accessory belts off and make sure all the pulleys spin. It could be a seized alternator, etc. If the motor still doesn't turn over I'd say the t-belt may have skipped and bent a valve.

Ok update!

All pulleys are free.

I found that when i removed plug #1 i could get engine to turn. Sweet!

I checked the oil and its full of fuel... to be expected.

Assuming the injector has stuck open badly I pulled it.

Injector has a dent in the end of it... which could maybe be from install of it (this is not one i have replaced) or it could be from something internal? Ill post a pic soon. What do you think? Could a bent valve cause this?

Pics of the injector damage.

 

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I wouldn’t think a bent valve would have anything to do with that. It’s really easy to ding up the tip of the injector. They’re kinda soft.

 

Not sure where you’re located but if you happen to be near central NJ I would gladly let you borrow an injector to try.

Ok that's good to hear. I really appreciate the offer that is way too kind. Unfortunately I am way up in southwestern Ontario. I do luckily have some injectors that are new kicking around! I'm going to try an oil change and a new injector and go from there!

Thanks!

 

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Great job on your description and find. You might pull the remaning injectors and send them in for cleaning while you're there. Also, the injectors don't open while the system is being primed. They do open when cranking, unless you put the pedal to the floor (the system cuts all fuel in this case).

 

Here's my suggestion:

1. Pull all injectors and send for cleaning

2. Change the oil.

3. Remove all spark plugs.

4. With pedal to the floor, crank the engine to remove all remaining fuel from the cylinders. Note: If you don't have injectors installed yet for this step, you must pull the fuel pump fuse or you'll be angry that fuel is everywhere.

Don't forget that the injectors also shall be matched while you are at it so that all gives the same volume. If they differ then you will put more strain on the cat and also risk a burnt valve.

Thanks for all the help and suggestions guys.

If I'm being honest, the reason I have 2 extra injectors is that I changed the other two a few weeks ago and never finished off the other side. This was really poor planning and thinking on my part. I bought 4 planning to do them all and I've put it off far too long.

So here i am replacing the last 2 injectors, kicking myself because I may have caused my own problem. I'm going to make sure to purge the fuel from the cylinders before attempting to restart.

I should be able to have it back going this afternoon. Hopefully. I'm changing the oil now and will keep you up to date on how it goes.

 

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Ok. So. Not good news.

I got it turning over with the starter to clear out the fuel. No problem. Clears out good but does sound slightly off.

I reassemble everything. Goes back together and start it up. Not good.

It has a massive misfire and sounds awful. After a few seconds I shut it off. Go around to the back and there is a line of oil spewed from the exhaust.

Looks like it's something more major.

 

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Headgasket blown due to hydraulicing if you are lucky. If not you have a crack somewhere in the block or the head. Or even piston.

 

 

Just make sure you change oil if you haven't done it.

 

 

So off with the head first.

Edited May 5, 2019 by ehsnils
Added piston as culprit too.

Ok. So. Not good news.

I got it turning over with the starter to clear out the fuel. No problem. Clears out good but does sound slightly off.

I reassemble everything. Goes back together and start it up. Not good.

It has a massive misfire and sounds awful. After a few seconds I shut it off. Go around to the back and there is a line of oil spewed from the exhaust.

Looks like it's something more major.

 

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Definitely oil? Does it feel like oil?..not soot and water? While its running do you see blue or white smoke? The rough running could be fouled plug(s). I’d pull all 4 and inspect. How long since timing belt serviced?

did you check the timing belt?

It's even possible the timing belt have jumped. So a thorough check is in place.

 

 

Compression test may give a lot of information too.

Ok folks. So turns out i may have panicked and gotten a tad dramatic.

 

What first looked like oil on the ground must have actually been very carbon soak fuel from the exhaust. After a few minutes of frustration I was able to go back to the car and re-asses the situation.

 

I tried restarting the car again and it resulted in the same symptoms as the very first time, cranking but no start. I then pulled the fuel pump fuse and tried starting again in flood mode (pedal to the floor). This time it started back up, spewing what i now know was fuel out the tailpipe and running super rough until it stalled when the fuel ran out.

 

My saving grace was that I got a code during this startup for a miss fire on #2. I must have miss diagnosed which injector was bad, having assumed #2 to be alright due to it being changed recently.

 

I repeated the entire process of removing plugs and purging fuel then changed the #2 injector to the old one out of cylinder #3.

 

After reassembling and once again starting in flood mode the car came back to life!! I could immediately tell the difference in how it ran. It really must have been dumping fuel because it took a good 15 minutes of running to get it all out of the exhaust, I was also down nearly a quarter tank.

 

It really surprised me how much that fuel in the cylinder sounded like a serious engine clunk/rattle, and the crazy volume of fuel it dumped. I had no idea it was possible to hydro lock the car like that with fuel.

 

So the root of the problem here was the cheaper amazon injectors (matching part numbers of course) as opposed to the nearly 1000$ CAD id have to spend to buy new OEM ones. The cheaper ones clearly suck and I should have listened to all you people on the forums when you said to buy the proper OEM parts.

 

I cant thank you guys all enough for the help in getting this thing going! Its a true lifesaver. I seriously doubt I'd have figured this out on my own.

 

Ill make sure to do another oil change in the near future to ensure none of the fuel from the second time is still sitting in the oil and also replace the damn injectors with the proper ones. Hopefully there will be no other long term damage from this fiasco, and hopefully I can limp this thing to the shop to go over it a bit further!

This is the old girl after we got it going!

 

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Thats great news! If you think that the oil got contaminated again you might as well dump that oil too. You definitely don’t want to run till next oil change with the possibility of diluted oil.

The bent injector has been that way for a long time. Someone must have dinged it a long time ago, but it won't affect the performance.