need help car sounds like wrx (greddy turbo kit)
 

looking for some help to figuring out whats going on with my car on sunday night i was driving on the freeway at a steady 55 mph and made a pass so i picked up the speed to about 65 with very light throttle then all of a sudden just a instant loss of power and check engine light flashing i pull off the freeway and the car sounded like it would stall with a very low lopy idle check engine light flashes at all times, once i rev the engine it struggles and the engine tone fades away. i have checked all my IC couplers and everything is visually tight. i tried placing the stock intake tube with the factory box back in but the same problem still occured so i believe the problem might have to do with the turbo kit....here are my codes that where stored in the cobb ap: p0302,p0506,p050a,p0411,ic u1900,eps u1900,
rke u1900, also when cold starting the car my boost gauge reads at 0 and the idle sits very low about 500 rpm. after a few seconds idle will raise to about 7/800
rpm and boost gauge will read 10 in/Hg...im hoping i can figure out whats going on before the so cal dyno day this sat.

thanks
gregs

i hate to be one to say it - have you checked compression?

happened to similar.. when i braught my car to the cold weather of 12 degree.. it was sounding like wrx broom broom broom..

but this was when i turned it off and it sat for a while.. it hesitated to crank over and smoke came out the tail pipes enough to cover the street and i got in and drove it around the block with loss of power and no acceleration above 6K rpm..

have you checked your coils? maybe carbon build up..

on the 24 hr trip i made i had to go 30 mph in 6th gear for long period.. i believe carbon must have begun to build up.. drove it hard for a couple minutes with tons of back fire and it has been cures since them..

MAF sensor dirty? try seafoaming the motor see if that does any good i do it through the spark plugs ive felt the biggest results doin that..

keep us informed man

BTW i also did a compression test right before the trip passed with green colors 54K miles

Compression check first.
Any diagnosis will follow.

gregs, I gotta agree with what's being said here.
Get the compression checked out at a local shop if you don't have a compression tester. JRX, rotary ressurection , NeptuneSpeed, just pick one. Call them up, and ask if you can bring the car in today.

yeah i wanted to avoid the compression test but i should know better.. i take care of that today if i have a have an open slot in the shop

10 inHg.... check compression

sorry to hear that dude. All signs point to blown engine :(

Yup. 10 inHg is very low. Think the motor is dead or dying.

Question for the people who are familiar with this stuff:

In his situation, if he's got poor compression suddenly like that, but the engine can still run in that limited fashion, does that indicate anything specific? Like can you use any of that to determine whether or not the seals are about to fail vs if the seals completely shattered and killed the insides? Would you hear different sounds if the seals broke, or would the engine even start if that were the case?

You can do a simple test yourself.
Take a spark plug out for each rotor . put your thumb over the hole and have someone crank it over . You will be able to feel any weak pulses .

Does not sound good - sorry to hear ...

im having trouble with my rotary compression test software. can i use a regular compression tester just to see if there is a big difference between the two rotors?

You wont need a compression tester - see post above yours

If the engine sounds like a lawnmower, then your seals are toasted.

this makes me a little nervous

curious as to anyone explanation of what happened?

the OP says he was hardly in boost and was at "very low light throttle" coming up to 65.. and this happened..

theories?

if you cracked a seal earlier, it might not fall apart till some random time down the road.

Stories like this ARE scary. However if your car is in good shape and you have a good tune, you can flog it and not worry about it breaking. Of course, it is a motor and it isn't immune to damage, so the clock is always ticking - this includes NA rx-8's.

ive had a case of this exact problem being bad coils. I also would not recommend brettus' method of sticking your finger in the spark plug hole and letting an apex seal chop your finger off lol.

wow! as a recent FI'er myself this is super scary. hope it's nothing serious....

you can view my engine rebuild thread in my sig .. I was boosted for 2 full years. no real issues. even the cause of the engine rebuild wasn't really turbo related. Engine internals look great!

don't let all the doom and gloom scare you. Once the smoke clears, take note what went wrong and avoid falling into the same situation.

sucks man, hope the engine isn't blown.

That was exactly what I thought when I first read his post. But I re-read it and he did say put thumb OVER hole, not finger IN hole, so it wasn't the finger severing prank I initially thought it was :lol:

A boosted 8 is no cheap or easy matter. I have known guys who put the turbo on their car, drove down the block and it blew.

Sorry to say, but the Renesis was never meant for boost, getting it to boost is going to be expensive both in the short and the long run.

^^^its something i knew to expect eventually so theres no complaints or bashing here, i wish i knew exactly why it went, i have all the signs of a rotor #2 failure today i brought my notebook to confirm it with a rotary compression test...the turbo gurus here are awesome with info and soo much help so im just glad to be apart of the community

Jeez guys I would not try a prank like that .
There is no danger in putting your thumb OVER the hole like i said and it will give you the same diagnosis as a compression tester without wasting your money .
If you can feel an obvious difference with your thumb you know with 100% certainty your motor is munted .

Greg - do you recall any hesitation etc in previous boosted runs ?

no hesitation what so ever as a matter of fact just before i jumped on the freeway i made a comment to my passenger on how my idle was soo perfect and car ran soo smooth