[lavega21]

This my situation…had my 96 GT garaged for about two years. I now have the need for this car to become my daily commuter. All I did was charge the battery and the car started like nothing. I did smell some gasoline smell coming from the engine, but could not see any leaks or anything I took it to smog failed so I changed oil, spark plugs, oil filter, air filter and then as soon as I turn the engine on looks like a cylinder one misfired based on the check engine code. That engine code was not there before.

I took it to the smog station again and it failed again with almost exactly results. I did reset the check engine code and after driving the car for 750 miles it has not appeared again. I do notice that it is creating more steam from the exhaust, more than normal I have never seen it this way before. It goes away eventually but I have never seen it that much before. The low oil came on which before It never did, I checked the oil and I smell gasoline a little, I mean I just changed the oil about 750 miles ago and it is low….could all this be connected with the misfiring of the cylinder? What about the air filter I know I had to remove the Air Flow Thing, Maybe I did something wrong with that? Any ideas? Thank you….See my other thread for feedback on the overall issues I am having with this car. Thank you.

177K Original Original - Mainly in town drive 20-25 miles daily.


Other thread on this car

[SoCal2V]

Likely bad news here, in the form of bad compression.

Try the Dollar Bill test- Start the engine, remove the oil fill cap, and hold a bill of your favorite denomination over the fill spout. Does it blow up and away from the fill spout, or is there a light amount of suction holding the bill in place?

If it blows up and away, this would be a strong indication of bad compression via compression rings on the piston. Follow up with a compression test and cylinder leakdown test on any poorly performing cylinders. When you perform the compression test, when you get a low reading at a particular cylinder, the quick and easy way to diagnose the lack of compression being due to a bad ring is to put about a teaspoon amount of motor oil into the cylinder and then repeat the compression test at that location. If you get better numbers with the oil in the cylinder, it would more or less confirm the lack of compression is due to the piston ring. If it stays pretty much the same, a leakdown test will confirm if it's a valve and which one in particular.

What's happening essentially is the unburnt air/fuel mixture in the combustion chamber is escaping into the crankcase on the compression stroke, aka 'blowby'. That would be why you smell gasoline in the oil and also explain the oil consumption you're experiencing.

[lavega21]

As always, thank you for your reply...I will try that, but my thing is that nothing like this was happening before so what did I do to cause this? All the four things I did are pretty much routine tune up changes. Did I do something to cause this? Possibly?