2.2l legacy missfire

[akovell]

Scotty,thanks for the suggestions. I looked up the thread on proper knock sensor installation before replacing mine. I did it as recommended - angled it as shown and torqued to 17 ft/lbs. Will try the cat check, although I've doubts if I can do it as you described due to rusty nuts on flanges. Will give it a shot next weekend.

 

Alex

[Scotty1419]

Well im tired of fooling with it.. I obviously cant fix this stupid car.. and no one else can.. so im just going to pay to have another 2.2 swap done.. oh well.

[crws]

Any updates or solutions come about this thread?

[Ravenwoods]

I just had this same problem with an EJ25D (which is what your GT has unless it's been swapped to a 2.2). Turned out the intake cam pulley bolt was not tightened enough when the owner did the head gaskets (himself) and this resulted in the cam pulley bouncing on the cam nose and gougeing a nice L-shaped trench out of the keyway. The intake valve timing on the passenger side was advanced by about 3 belt teeth. Due to the nature of the failure the compression test showed high (but otherwise ok - was around 200 psi where it should have been about 185). The giveaway after many hours of diagnostics was that the two passenger side cylinders had compression that was too high and was *the same* higher number for both cylinders - thus leading me to the valve timing and leading me to pull off the belt and inspect.

 

It's simple process of elimination and sometimes it takes time and some hand-wringing and head slapping to get there - your mechanic gave up too easily.

 

GD

 

I think my Subaru Forester also has a slipped belt. Compression is 200 on the passenger side cylinders and 150 on the driver's side. The OBD code reader says misfire on cylinders 1 and 3. Plugs and wires have been changed. Car has 190,000 miles. I changed pcv and fuel injectors.

[dballs]

Well im tired of fooling with it.. I obviously cant fix this stupid car.. and no one else can.. so im just going to pay to have another 2.2 swap done.. oh well.

 

I had this SAME EXACT problem with my 96 2.2. After changing almost everything you did and doing extensive research online I found that some of the 2.2's had bad valve guides and the valves would randomly not seat right (usually under heavier load).

 

The fix: A valve job or try running fully synthetic oil. The theory with the synthetic is it makes it just a bit more slippery and allows the valves to move as they normally would. I had to run FULL synthetic oil in mine from 150,000 to 318k or it went back to the misfire nonsense. This is also why it just throws misfire codes. It also is confusing because mechanical problems are not usually intermittent and random.

 

If I switched back to conventional oil, it did not take long to start misfiring again. I can't say this will fix your problem but it may

[Ravenwoods]

Turns out my 1998 Forester with 190,000 miles on it, had a slipped timing belt. My mechanic could see no reason for it to have slipped. So we just replaced the timing belt and belt tensioner. It has slipped at least 2 teeth. Previously we had done a compression test and leak down test. He found the compression about 200 psi for each of the two passenger side cylinders and 150 psi for the two driver's side cylinders. Then I found this post earlier in this thread:

 

"I just had this same problem with an EJ25D (which is what your GT has unless it's been swapped to a 2.2). Turned out the intake cam pulley bolt was not tightened enough when the owner did the head gaskets (himself) and this resulted in the cam pulley bouncing on the cam nose and gougeing a nice L-shaped trench out of the keyway. The intake valve timing on the passenger side was advanced by about 3 belt teeth. Due to the nature of the failure the compression test showed high (but otherwise ok - was around 200 psi where it should have been about 185). The giveaway after many hours of diagnostics was that the two passenger side cylinders had compression that was too high and was *the same* higher number for both cylinders - thus leading me to the valve timing and leading me to pull off the belt and inspect."

 

So I figured this had to be the problem as we had eliminated just about every other possibility. My mechanic seemed to have been embarrassed for missing this and gave me a $100 discount on the job.

 

Anyway, the car is running fine again. Hopefully it will keep going 20,000 before the next problem.