To achieve maximum miles per gallon, your Mini needs all of its parts to be working in perfect order. Trouble StartingĪs the spark plugs are essential to start your engine, if they are on the fritz, you’ll likely find your Mini is tricky to start, maybe needing several turns of your key before the engine turns over. Difficult Accelerationĭue to the O2 sensor being faulty, the lean mixture of air and fuel as well as frequent misfires will make the extra “oomph” needed from the engine to accelerate a challenge, and you will likely notice that is harder to increase your speed, as if your car is sluggish. This will make your Mini run more roughly and will also contribute to even more misfires. This can cause the sensor to make incorrect readings, resulting in a lean air/fuel mixture. When misfires become frequent because of bad spark plugs, the unburned fuel can sometimes fool your Mini’s O2 sensor. You or your mechanic can utilize equipment to make sense of the codes to begin proper repairs. When it does, it will also send out error codes which can be read using a diagnostic tool known as an OBDII scanner. The check engine light is triggered by your Mini’s main computer, the ECU, which will pick up on the frequent misfires and trigger the check engine light to illuminate. When the misfires become severe enough, you will start to physically feel the difference and even hear it, too. Regular misfires may also trigger the check engine light, but more on that later. This will cause rough running that is most noticeable when idling, struggle accelerating, and lowered fuel efficiency. These misfires occur when the fuel isn’t correctly ignited. The symptom which bad spark plugs are most synonymous with are ignition misfires. Let’s take a closer look at each of these points. Signs and Symptoms of Spark Plug FailureĪs spark plugs need to continually produce ignition to keep the combustion cycle in motion, when they start to fail, the overarching theme of your driving experience will be rough idling, poor acceleration, lowered performance, poor gas mileage, and misfires. Let’s discuss some of the signs and symptoms of failing spark plugs. Most owner’s manuals will recommend you change your spark plugs ever 60,000– 100,000 miles, but keeping track of mileage between replacement can often be tricky. If they fail, your Mini’s engine will not start or run properly. The spark plug is responsible for producing the spark needed to ignite the mixture of air and fuel inside your engine. However, if left ignored, it can cause dire consequences for your vehicle. Same at 70F and 100F.Failing spark plugs in your Mini are an inexpensive and easily-fixed repair. I'm not sure).ĭoes it regardless of ambient temps outside. but I know it boosted strong at some point before the head was installed, and I'm not sure it has since the head was installed (but it may have. I don't know for sure that the boost changed at that point in time. Basically just a ported and polished head, stock valve size, probably similar to JCW but maybe a bit more aggressive in the porting. Only thing that has changed that I can think of that MAY have corresponded with the boost behavior change is Thumper-1 head installation. Now it might not get there after 30 seconds of WOT. just takes a LOT longer pulling at WOT to get there than it used to - I used to hit 15psi after only several seconds of WOT. Maximum boost I can attain is about where it should be. No codes, no weirdness stored when I interrogate the ECU with Autoenginuity.īelt is pretty fresh and doesn't appear to be slipping - that would have shown up on the dyno. But in retrospect, I can attest that it had been going on a while - I keep BST displayed on the ScanGauge all the time, and I can recall that I haven't seen high boost numbers as consistently as of late. This was really noticed at a recent re-tune on the dyno.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |