21 replies to this topic

[The Matt]

could the misfire be caused when cornering by fuel starvation?

It does sound ominous but really hard to diagnose without seeing the car and having a play.

May even have been caused by momentary loss of spark due to a loose connection and then when it fired up again it could have shot some unspent fuel out of the back? Though that would tend to be grey/black smoke.

[AlexM]

Not a turbo is it?

piston rings blowing perhaps.

[cowboy]

ok you say you had "white smoke out of the exhaust " and a missfire,, the white smoke was probably the excess fuel burning off

its hard to say weather it will last for your motorway trip. but you should atleast have cover for you mini anyhow, you never know when you need it, im a mechanic and i have breakdown.. you never know when somethings gonna break

[deaks46]

I t may have been a valve sticking open. I experienced a similar event years ago. When I decoked the head, I found a piece of the intake guide had snapped of.

[Clubby1275GT]

cheers chaps, prob solved now, it was a blown head gasket. water had broke through the gasket from the water pump. all solved now. but its just idling like a peice of poo now and have u ever heard of this......
the inlet manifold and the exhaust manifold isnt the same thickness at the back of the head so when u tighten up the bolts it only presses against the inlet therefore until i can think of a new way ive had to slide some washers in to replace the thickness! which is making the manifold blow slighlty.
im lookin to cheaply modifiy my car too, at the mo its a stage 1 1275 and its pretty nippy, ive had a golf 1.9 tdi off the lights before.
what are the benefits of drop gears (aprat from that wicked whine they make) and how much am i talking to pay someone to put a mild cam in and port the head to a stage 3 aswell as fit the drop gears??
can anyone else recommend anything?

[dklawson]

You already have drop gears. It sounds like from your description you mean "straight cut" drop gears. The advantage is supposed to be that they have no for/aft thrust caused by the helix angle. This means selecting and fitting the "correct" thrust washers is a little less important. As you say, they will be noisier.

Sorry about the head gasket. Since you say the car is idling poorly at the moment, did you make sure all the bolts/studs were torqued properly? Did you have the block and head checked to make sure they're still flat or did you simply install a new gasket? Have you re-adjusted the valves properly after torquing the head?

[Clubby1275GT]

the head was stripped by a friend and put together by him, i took the head to get skimmed. i imagine he torqued it up, then ran it and then re-torqued it after like ur supposed to , as for re-adjusting the valves, dont quite no what u mean?
think i need to get it on a rolling road and get it tuned up properly. could they examine it from there? i really do need a mini specialist to look at it, but im in birmingham and i dont know of any