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Spectra Misfire, Low Compression, and Oil in Coolant?
Hi all, well this has been a long frustrating nightmare with this car, and I figured I'd get some more opinions on where to go next. Here's the story. Warning: it's a long one! I bought the car (2006 Kia Spectra 5) wrecked with only about 3000 miles on it - it had been hit on the driver's side not too heavily and just needed a new fender, core support, bumper cover, and minor frame work. The door was quite a bit dented up too but still functions so I didn't replace it. Anyway, so I did the body work and had the frame pulled, took off with the car on the highway and drove into the sunset, right? No, stupid me, I didn't catch the leak that the radiator had, didn't keep a good eye on the temperature gauge, and it lost all its coolant and overheated at about 80 mph trying to pass a semi. It wouldn't start after adding coolant so I got it towed back to the garage, and later discovered that it had hardly any compression.
Ok great, so I took the head off and gave it to a machine shop where the mechanic replaced a couple valves and (theoretically) brought the head back to spec since it had been warped from the severe overheating. Put the new head back (and replaced the radiator with a new one) on with all new gaskets and it still wasn't getting great compression on cylinders 1 and 2 though I believe it did start at this point. So I took the pan off and took out the pistons and the rings were pretty stuck on all of them, so I replaced all of the rings. The bearings, cylinders and pistons, etc. all looked fine though of course they may not be.
Fired it up and it was running much better and getting good compression in all cylinders! It still had a rough idle and low power though. And I got a check engine light soon after with codes PO302 and PO340 which are Cylinder 2 Misfire and Camshaft Position Sensor Circuit Malfunction. Also after driving it a few times, I noticed that it was losing oil and the coolant level was increasing! I drained the coolant and found lots of oil in the radiator and the overflow container. Hoping that it might just be leftover oil that we got in the coolant passages or something when we had the engine apart, I refilled the coolant. It seems to be leaking oil onto the ground as well in small quantities, so I figured that maybe the leak is just coming from around the top of the pan and that I didn't seal it up very well. But after driving it a few more times, the coolant level does indeed still seem to be rising and there appears to be a fair amount of oil in the radiator when I remove the cap. However, coolant is not getting into the oil.
Anyway, after I cleared the codes, the misfire code didn't come back so I focused on the other one. I read on these forums that a common problem that causes the camshaft position sensor code to appear is bad timing. Of course we had the head off so we could have easily mistimed it when we put it back on. So I checked the timing, which is somewhat difficult to visually line up when looking at the crankshaft pulley, and thought that it might be off one tooth. So I moved it one tooth and didn't notice much of a difference, for better or worse, which I still think is strange. I checked some other things and visually inspected the camshaft position sensor. It had a definite crack in it, potentially because it's inserted right into the head which obviously got extremely hot. I went ahead and just bought a new sensor and put it in, and lo and behold, the PO340 code goes away and it drives much better, albeit still with a rough idle! So I decided that the sensor indeed probably was bad.
But my nightmare isn't over because after driving it a few more times, the PO302 code comes back. I checked the ignition system which appears to be working great, then did a compression test and got something like 150-90-155-160 psi for cylinders 1-2-3-4 respectively. So obviously that's probably the cause of the cylinder 2 misfire. I went ahead and added a small amount of oil to cylinder 2 and reran the test and ended up getting about 110-115, an increase of 20 to 25 psi. Now I checked the specs for the car and the minimum compression is supposed to be 185 so it appears that all 4 cylinders are low, but I'm more concerned about #2 at the moment.
So I'm wondering - does anyone with experience doing this stuff know if that much of an increase in compression with the added oil points to a problem with the pistons/rings/cylinder over the head or what? Also any ideas on the oil to coolant leak? One other thing I'm slightly worried about is that maybe the timing was fine before I messed with it and now it's off one tooth. If that's the case, do you think that could be the cause of the compression being a bit low across the board or would it be worse than that? Also it runs pretty well aside from the rough idle so I'm obviously getting some power from cylinder 2. My main problem is that I was planning on taking this car on a five week long, 6000+ mile road trip in a week and a half. Now I'm getting worried that might not happen.
Hi all, well this has been a long frustrating nightmare with this car, and I figured I'd get some more opinions on where to go next. Here's the story. Warning: it's a long one! I bought the car (2006 Kia Spectra 5) wrecked with only about 3000 miles on it - it had been hit on the driver's side not too heavily and just needed a new fender, core support, bumper cover, and minor frame work. The door was quite a bit dented up too but still functions so I didn't replace it. Anyway, so I did the body work and had the frame pulled, took off with the car on the highway and drove into the sunset, right? No, stupid me, I didn't catch the leak that the radiator had, didn't keep a good eye on the temperature gauge, and it lost all its coolant and overheated at about 80 mph trying to pass a semi. It wouldn't start after adding coolant so I got it towed back to the garage, and later discovered that it had hardly any compression.
Ok great, so I took the head off and gave it to a machine shop where the mechanic replaced a couple valves and (theoretically) brought the head back to spec since it had been warped from the severe overheating. Put the new head back (and replaced the radiator with a new one) on with all new gaskets and it still wasn't getting great compression on cylinders 1 and 2 though I believe it did start at this point. So I took the pan off and took out the pistons and the rings were pretty stuck on all of them, so I replaced all of the rings. The bearings, cylinders and pistons, etc. all looked fine though of course they may not be.
Fired it up and it was running much better and getting good compression in all cylinders! It still had a rough idle and low power though. And I got a check engine light soon after with codes PO302 and PO340 which are Cylinder 2 Misfire and Camshaft Position Sensor Circuit Malfunction. Also after driving it a few times, I noticed that it was losing oil and the coolant level was increasing! I drained the coolant and found lots of oil in the radiator and the overflow container. Hoping that it might just be leftover oil that we got in the coolant passages or something when we had the engine apart, I refilled the coolant. It seems to be leaking oil onto the ground as well in small quantities, so I figured that maybe the leak is just coming from around the top of the pan and that I didn't seal it up very well. But after driving it a few more times, the coolant level does indeed still seem to be rising and there appears to be a fair amount of oil in the radiator when I remove the cap. However, coolant is not getting into the oil.
Anyway, after I cleared the codes, the misfire code didn't come back so I focused on the other one. I read on these forums that a common problem that causes the camshaft position sensor code to appear is bad timing. Of course we had the head off so we could have easily mistimed it when we put it back on. So I checked the timing, which is somewhat difficult to visually line up when looking at the crankshaft pulley, and thought that it might be off one tooth. So I moved it one tooth and didn't notice much of a difference, for better or worse, which I still think is strange. I checked some other things and visually inspected the camshaft position sensor. It had a definite crack in it, potentially because it's inserted right into the head which obviously got extremely hot. I went ahead and just bought a new sensor and put it in, and lo and behold, the PO340 code goes away and it drives much better, albeit still with a rough idle! So I decided that the sensor indeed probably was bad.
But my nightmare isn't over because after driving it a few more times, the PO302 code comes back. I checked the ignition system which appears to be working great, then did a compression test and got something like 150-90-155-160 psi for cylinders 1-2-3-4 respectively. So obviously that's probably the cause of the cylinder 2 misfire. I went ahead and added a small amount of oil to cylinder 2 and reran the test and ended up getting about 110-115, an increase of 20 to 25 psi. Now I checked the specs for the car and the minimum compression is supposed to be 185 so it appears that all 4 cylinders are low, but I'm more concerned about #2 at the moment.
So I'm wondering - does anyone with experience doing this stuff know if that much of an increase in compression with the added oil points to a problem with the pistons/rings/cylinder over the head or what? Also any ideas on the oil to coolant leak? One other thing I'm slightly worried about is that maybe the timing was fine before I messed with it and now it's off one tooth. If that's the case, do you think that could be the cause of the compression being a bit low across the board or would it be worse than that? Also it runs pretty well aside from the rough idle so I'm obviously getting some power from cylinder 2. My main problem is that I was planning on taking this car on a five week long, 6000+ mile road trip in a week and a half. Now I'm getting worried that might not happen.
i think it is better to change the engine by another used one
Did you check your CVVT Solenoid for sludge or metal debris? Is your CVVT operating correctly? If it is stuck it could cause the timing to be off, low compression and set the P0340..
Ok ton-g, so you don't think that the extra 20 psi of compression I got with the added oil is enough to point to a piston problem? Any idea where the oil could be leaking into the coolant but not the other way around? Can you think of a quick test I could run to narrow it down to the head?
Anakputa, thanks for the tip about the CVVT solenoid. I have no idea what or where this would be on the vehicle. Any idea about that? Also does it have another name? I can't seem to find any info on the part online.
Ok ton-g, so you don't think that the extra 20 psi of compression I got with the added oil is enough to point to a piston problem? Any idea where the oil could be leaking into the coolant but not the other way around? Can you think of a quick test I could run to narrow it down to the head?
Anakputa, thanks for the tip about the CVVT solenoid. I have no idea what or where this would be on the vehicle. Any idea about that? Also does it have another name? I can't seem to find any info on the part online.
Another name is the oil control valve OCV and it is in the cylinder in the front. If the engine overheat the oil may have sludged up causing the valve to stick or the CVVT at the end of the CAMSHAFT may be stuck or sludge too. This will cause all the timing to be off. Also I have see many times the chain on the of the camshafts be one link off. Check the master link on the camshaft and the "Timing Marks"
Gotcha, now I know what you're talking about. I can check that pretty easily. I'll let you know what I find. Tonight I also plan on blowing some compressed air into the cylinder at TDC and hopefully I will be able to figure out where the compression is escaping from.
Well I didn't check out the OCV yet but I did do my leak down test and it looks like I've got bigger problems. With the #2 piston at TDC I blew compressed air into the cylinder and noticed that most of the air was coming straight out the exhaust pipe. So I'm thinking there's an exhaust valve leak there. I still don't know what's causing the oil in the coolant though. I think I'm done with this head...I'm going to get a slightly used one and put it on and see what happens.
On that note, does anyone know if you can reuse the head gasket on this engine? I put a new gasket on the last time we had the head off so it's almost brand new. It'd be a shame to toss it out as I don't think it's the problem.
When you ran air through the cylinder, which stroke was it on? I ask because your valves are supposed to be open during the exhaust and intake strokes, which it may have been between. It would be better to do the test while the piston is at the bottom of the cylinder, between the ignition and exhaust strokes (take the valve cover off, to ensure the valves are closed), which would also allow you to check for a cracked cylinder wall (you'll know it when coolant rushes into the overflow container). If that's the problem, a new head would only be a waste of money.
It's taboo to reuse a head gasket, but it really depends on the condition of the gasket. If it looks good, then you may be able to just spray it with some copper gasket coating (I forget what it's called) and use it. If it's the one that was in it when the head warped though, then definitely replace it.
Spectra Misfire, Low Compression, and Oil in Coolant?
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