so now my 323 might need some extra TLC. :(

[SgtRauksauff]

Problems may be happening to the '90 323:

So, I go to my car this morning, pop in the key, press in the clutch, turn over the car. It cranked as normal, made a wierd muffled backfiring noise, and wouldn't start, even cranking six or eight more revolutions... looked in the rearview mirror in time to see what I thought was a black smoke cloud dissipating.
"Ok, that's wierd," I thought, but stopped cranking, and tried again. It cranked over several times before finally starting, and I heard the loudest darned HLA ticking I've ever heard.

Got out, went inside the house, grabbed my Volvo keys, aired up the tires, and used that to go to work.

Got home, pulled off the cam gear cover, turned the crank until the timing marks lined up. They were exactly right-on, like they were when I put the new timing belt on last April. I pulled the #1 plug, and stuck a straight piece of metal inside. slowly moved the crank pulley, the metal rod started to move down in either direction, so the timing is dead nuts on.

put the plug back in, fired it up, it seemed to be just a hair noisy still, but better than this morning. checked the oil, it was about 1/4 quart down, so I added some. Got out the stethoscope, on top of the valve cover, it seems to be that right over the intake side over cylinder 2 seems the loudest.

Went in, packed up my gym bag, and prepared to drive up to my martial arts class. got in the car, and this thing sounds horrible between shifting gears, when there's no exhaust noise at all, but the engine's still rotating, clattering along like crazy. The sound seems WAY to fast to be a spun bearing, plus it's definitely not a knocking noise, more of a higher-pitched ticking.

Dangit, I really wish I had an oil pressure guage.

When I prepped the BP to go into the 323, I did NOT replace the oil pump, just the water pump, front main seal, timing belt, and maybe the tensioner but I can't remember now.

So, here are my thoughts:

1) collapsed HLA:
Do they actually collapse?
Would a backfire cause one to collapse?

2) oil pump gone bad?
backfire maybe busted something, but the oil pressure light in the dash does not come on.

3) I just drove over 700 miles on Saturday, without a problem, and the next day a little bit also. It's basically time to do the oil change again, even though the oil isn't really dirty, it is a little blacker than I like.
Perhaps the long drive on a 91°+ day got things heated up, and broke loose more sludge inside the engine? I ran a couple oil changes in the first couple hundred miles, because the engine had sat for a year or so without running for more than 20 minutes at a time.

I'm wondering if I shouldn't throw some seafoam in the oil, let it idle for a few minutes, then change the oil and see if that helps.

I might pull the cam cover anyway, just to see if anything looks funny.

This is NOT supposed to happen now, I need to be arranging the clutch replacement in my '90 Protege, not diagnosing a critical engine problem on my 323.



Any insight that will help me out is greatly appreciated. I've got to go eat something, because I'm starving, then I'll hopefully be more relaxed and alert to start troubleshooting.

--sarge

[Turpro]

That's definetly weird. Sorry I have no advice as too what it could be. I'm subbin to see if an answer is found.

[coldblooded]

Check the lifters. I had this exact scenario happen (albeit on a 1.9 sohc).
I ended up running the engine with the valve cover off (surrounded by towels and still a mess) so I could perfectly narrow down where the noise was coming from...it was quickly obvious that there was one lifter/valve assembly making all the noise.
When I pulled the rocker arms off, it was pretty apparent that the lifter had come completely apart (inexplicably, to this day).

[FE3-323]

^ nightmare picture..... sarge it does sound like you may have a bad HLA. if you don't have spares im sure i do i find that running 1/2 a quart of ATF in my oil helps maintain cleanliness inside the motor. certainly kicks up & pulls junk out too

[SgtRauksauff]

SOLVED: an oil change fixed it, d'oh!

Well, what I ended up doing was adding about a third of a can of seafoam, drove up to the wal-mart to get another jug of mobil1 5w30 and a filter, drove back home, and changed the oil and filter. I was actually a little over my 3000 mile change interval, since I took the ~700 mile drive to pick up the 4WD instead of changing it. I think I was just kind of paranoid, considering that all of my engine problems have always revolved around oil starvation, lol!

The oil change fixed things right up. Maybe the seafoam helped, maybe not, it was only in the car for about 5 miles.

I think the issue may have been that when it was parked, it had just been driven all day long at ~70mph or more, and the oil on the verge of needing changing got worked over enough to NEED changing. I drove it the following day (sunday) about 8 miles or so, then parked it again. Monday, I only moved it about 20 feet, and didn't let it warm up. But tuesday morning it started making the loudest ticking noise I'd ever heard, and did the same after I got home from work and checked the timing and such. So, I figured a little cleaning and new oil might help. Sure enough, it's just like it was before!

I mean, the things got like 183,000 miles on it, give or take a couple thousand (I don't remember how many miles the donor car for the BP had, but it was up there), so it's not going to be perfect anyway.

I'll just have to be really strict on my oil change times for this car, that's all...

--sarge

[wheresthericego]

5x-30 is too thin for summer, At lease use 10w-30 for summers.
Thats the problem. I wont be surprised if you have this problem again when you drive the car for a extended period.

[SgtRauksauff]

That makes sense. Well, it's starting to get chilly now, down in the high 40's at night, so I think the 5w30 will be all right for the next few oil changes. I'll give 10w30 a try next spring for sure, though.

--sarge

[whistler]

I do 10w30 pretty much all year round. I have an extra few ticks during winter time, but thats about it. Glad you figured out the issue!

[Hadoken]

If you're using synthetic oil you really shouldn't be changing it at 3000 miles, you should give it at least 5000-7000 miles before changing it, it's meant to go even longer than that. If you're messing up synthetic before that I'd think you still have problems.

http://neptune.spacebears.com/cars/stories/mobil1.html

[SgtRauksauff]

I usually do go about 5000 in my other cars. I think it might be that this particular engine sat for quite a long time, and I didn't really flush the system when I put it in the 323, other than just draining the oil that was in it. I had put some plain-old 5w30 in it, and ran it for a couple hundred miles, and it was dirty by the time I changed it. Then I put in the Mobil1, and this was the first oil change since then. Actually, now that I think about it, I think it was closer to 5000 miles, because I didn't have a speedo gear for the first couple of months.

--sarge