Quote:
Originally Posted by Nacho_ZR1
Everything was fine until I let off the gas and made a U turn to come back home. The car was idling extremely roughly and it was sluggish to get through the gears. I took her home and let it sit for a few minutes. When I tried starting the car back up, it cranked for at least 10-15 seconds and a big puff of grey smoke came out of the exhaust.
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Wow...What is it about Texas anyway? The second car in as many days with a similar tale of woe!
From your description, it sounds more like coolant leaking than it does a fuel delivery problem, e.g, "Everything was fine
until I let off the gas..."...coupled with the whitish grey smoke (steam, acutally) is a classic symptom of an Injector Housing (aka "IH") gasket failure. This is not a big deal to fix, but DO NOT crank it again, just yet! There are a couple preliminary things ya need to do to get into the right area, and if it is a coolant (gasket) leak, chances are you may have enough water in one of the cylinders to hydra-lock a piston and wreak some serious damage.
Pull the plugs and see if you have any that are steam cleaned; that is to say it would have much less soot on it than the rest, and of course if it is wet with coolant... There is a coolant passage running between the intake runners of cylinders 1&3 and 2&4 which leaves maybe 1/4" or a smidge less between 15# of coolant pressure and - 10# or so of vacuum; worst case during throttle-closed deceleration from high rpm.
I just happen to have taken a pic of my leak - didn't use one of Jerry's gaskets after porting my top end - was the problem. Notice where coolant has collected on the inside of the runner on number 3 cylinder (primary) runner. Notice that gray-black stuff along the seam (at the 10 o'clock position) extruding into the runner. That, my friend, is some of the gasket that is squirting out, being made of sub-standard material (as it turns out).
BTW, hopefully your coolant is the green glycol type and not the orange colored Dexcool? Our stock head gaskets - all stock gaskets disintegrate in the presence of Dex. Oh, and another thing...You may notice the brass plug to the left of the runner. Should you need to pull the intake plenum, drilling and tapping the IH to accept such a plug will eliminate the need to drain and refill the coolant, whenever the mood strikes to pull the plenum. (Pulling the plenum is a "right of passage" for ZR-1 drivers. Just about everyone has done it once, sooner or later.)
Anyway, if you have a steam cleaned plug, it is a sign of a coolant leak, and chances are it is the IH gasket or maybe even a plenum gasket; not wanting to think "head gasket" just yet.
With all the plugs out, you can tap the starter - just bumping it to slowly turn the crank over. If you have a cylinder full of water, bumping it with the plugs removed will allow the water to escape w/o doing any harm. And, of course, water expelled from a cylinder would confirm you don't have a fuel delivery problem.
A fueling problem can be narrowed down with a leak-down test. You can rent a fuel pressure gauge (or buy one - would be my recommendation) from e.g. AutoZone. Hook the gauge to the Shrader valve on the front of the right-side fuel rail, and without cranking the starter, turn the switch on. The fuel pressure should come up to around 45-50#. Shut off the key, and pressure should not leak down more than a pound or two over a period of a couple minutes. If the pressure holds, then the pump(s) are working and you don't have an injector that is leaking nor a check-valve (in the pumps) leaking either.
Well, this should get you started. Let us know how what you find out, and someone will pick it up from there.
Sorry 'bout your luck. But, you're not alone. And, you are reasonably close to one of the gurus of these cars - Cory Henderson - who can handle anything you may need.
P.