Well I have a odd issue on my had and i don't know how to tackle it. Yesterday I washed my car at my apartment. Turn car on and moved it to the water spigot and proceeded to wash my car and dry it there after. Turn car on and put it back into my parking space. nothing out of the ordinary happened. This is in a underground heated garage and the water is a on the hard side, incase this is important. Hours later I go out to start the car to go out on the town and there is this loud engine knock and I get a odd smell in the cabin. The knock is kind of loud and it slowly dies out. Checked oil and it is where it should be. Checked if it threw any codes and nothing came up. Decided it would not be wise to drive it so i left it in the garage. came back from going out and wanted to see if the knocking was still there. Nope car turned over and made no hint of a knock. Like nothing had ever happened. Does anyone have any idea what exactly is going on. I read it might be misfire from the moisture but I figure with a gapping hole (HA!) in my hood the car would be more resilient against water. Any ideas of why this happened or plans of action I should take would be greatly appreciated. Thank you and I hope one of you may have my answer!
Hmmm... I had a problem similar to this on my 02 bug eye wrx a few years back during the summer. Heard what seems like a loud knock followed by a burnt rubber smell. Turns out the pulley to my AC seized and broke in half and the belt came right off. Maybe try checking your pulley? Don't know if this is any help. GLW your search.
Never had a odd smell but I had this happen once on my 02 wrx as well. However it had sat 2 days in -20 weather and it had piston slap knocking sound shut it off restarted it after a hour and no other noise the rest of the 3yrs I owned it.
I have had similar issues after washing. Especially throwing codes and running like poop. Could have been water in the MAF for me...not sure about your situation. It's totalled?
I bought the car without the AC belt hooked up. I plan on replacing the other belt this summer and the AC belt. I'll go check it out. Thanks for the input. Did this also happen after you washed your car? Thanks for the input. Did this happen after you washed it as well. This seems to be a common occurrence. i figured the snorkel would get rid of the water. No codes popped up for me. how often did this happen to you?
Often when i pressure washed it, occasionally when i went through a drive through. It was worse when i started running the SPT Short Ram(as you'd expect). Most of the time, it would happen when i'd hop on the highway for an air dry and i'd get on it a bit.
Would you say not to worry about it? Its the first time its happened to me since I have owned a Subaru. Just had this sinking feeling that I would need a engine rebuild.
Well, that's not for me to say as i didn't witness it first hand. If you are concerned, get it looked at! If you have started it since and all is back to normal, i say drive it.
Started it this morning and to my dismay its back . Its doing the same thing started up and knocked rocked the car side to side a little and died out all in like 30 seconds. Decided to try and pull code again and well i now have a P0301 code or cylinder 1 misfire detected. To me this looks like I will be doing maintenance a little early this season. I figure the coarse of action would be doing the plugs as I have those at the ready. Then move to coil packs and finally the wires that connect to the coil packs. Does this sound like the right order to do things? To diagnose coil packs do I just swap the suspected bad coil packs with one of good ones?
Sounds like a good plan you laid out, I wouldn't freak out yet - obviously don't drive it, but moving the suspect coil around and then starting/idling to check it out shouldn't hurt anything, AFAIK.
sadly I have to drive it as I have no other means of getting to and from work. I have to keep my fingers crossed and hope I can easily fix it. I would like to do a compression test but I don't have one.
This is true. I guess i will have to resort to getting a rental. I cant be driving to and from shakopee. This blows.
Check the coil pack clip first then swap coilpacks when you do plugs. Yes, swap them and see if the misfire follows the coilpack or stays on the same cylinder.
I'm sorry I'm at complete loss. I just got home from work. I started my car and there was no issue. Cleared the code and it did not come back. What the h e double hockey stick is going on here? I may have forgot to mention that I used some fuel injector cleaner on the current fuel in the tank but it ran fine before before this. Plus it would not make sense if it was only one cylinder. I still plan on doing the plugs and such.
Well I replaced the plugs and it has seem to breath new life into the car. Only thing now is do I dare poke the bear and try to replicate the original issue?
If the "knock" was truly from a misfire, yes, they can randomly come and go (it gets rather infuriating) until the issue rears it's ugly head. I would say to try driving it gingerly now and see if the issue comes back. FWIW, after a car wash in my 05 saabaru, I had a terrible stumble when I pulled back onto the highway...pulled over immediately, popped the hood, and the SPT intake was rather wet. I let it dry out a bit, and all was fine after. No knock, but a definitely stumble when the ecu sensed moisture. Another FWIW, I also had a random misfire on the 05...came and went and rarely threw a code. I installed a boost gauge one day, and after that the misfire was terrible and finally threw a code. As it turned out, one of the white insulators on one of the spark plugs had a hairline crack...replaced that plug, not a single issue after.
