As mentioned, we found the cause of the issue during testing yesterday. First step was to fix/re-weld the blown manifold. Seng worked on it all night and we go it started again. The engine seems to be running fine. We still haven’t sorted out the alternator wiring issue which will be worked on after CNY holidays.
If you look closely, you can see the welded areas on the intake manifold.The whole top section actually broke.
Things didn’t turn out as planned today. We decided to have a final test session before Chinese New Year. I changed a couple of things on the front wheel alignment setup. Reduced static camber as the camber change value is greater than what i expected it to be due castor setting. I realized some misfiring too during the Terato.com photo shoot last Sunday. So we decided to test it out before we packed up for the holidays.
Well, the car was still misfiring on all the runs we did today. I couldn’t drive it hard. We went through another set of coils and change the plugs but it just wouldn’t go away. On the last run there was a loud “BANG” from the engine bay. I thought that would be the end of my 2.2L engine. I looked behind searching for a trail of engine oil but to my surprise, nothing.
What i found instead was a blown intake manifold! It actually split to half due to the backfire! After post mortem we found that the battery had no charge from the alternator which caused a drop in voltage, that messed up ignition.
So looks like we will have to repair the intake (while we wait for a new intake to arrive), sort out the alternator wiring and re-test. So much for CNY holiday.
I sure hope the base engine is not stressed from the drama today.
