Smoking out of valve cover breather. Update: Compression Sux

[Marty van den Bosch]

"Do it right..."

Buy an AWD and start swapping :wink:

Hahaha....ya this wet weather is really lame.

I spin like mad now.


Car still drives fine and still has good power.

No rush on the repair - I may just slowly start buying the parts I need then by spring time do it right.

[Ryan Coft]

coming from a guy who's been here, done this, unless you want to go a lot farther with the car (times wise) then just fix it....

good stock rebuild will run just fine without spending the extra $$ on stupidly expensive engine parts...

[Marty van den Bosch]

Well I went the cheapest route.

Took it to Frank - I dropped it off Friday and had it back Saturday (wow!)

He repalced 3 piston sets (rod/ring/piston) and my belt tensioner.

The landings on 1 piston was actually missing chunks of piston
The other 2 had badly cracked landings.
Cylinder walls, tops of pistons and everything else looked fine however.

All said and done $1500 drive away.

Compression is better again, and no more smoke or blow-by.

I have a CEL now however - "31 Detonation sensor"
Checked the knock sensor plug and it looks fine and secure.

Logging shows I either have 0 knock or 9 knock - no other number.

Any ideas what else I should look at? oir just replace it? (Car has 160k on it)