chelito92105

A shop is out of the question. Im a DIY and have a pretty good idea about how to take things apart. I am broke out of my mind but I have a friend with a garage who would have all of the necessary parts. So the head gasket job takes about 10 hours? Im just trying to get all of the fundamentals before I go tearing into the thing. I still have to check the cylinders and see if there are any fluids. At this point either the cat or head gasket problem sound bad.

RB24SRB24DETT

i see to much of this to let you do all the work for a headgasket. take off the cat and have a look. if it is clogged or if it is broken then that is what you need. if you have a ses light give me the code and i will tell you what it is.

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A HERO GETS REMEMBERED BUT A LEGEND NEVER DIES. (RB26DETT)

chelito92105

Thanks for all the replies. I will be taking the cat off this weekend and checking the cylinders and hopefully running some compression tests to pinpoint the exact problem. I'll update this as soon as I get the inspection done.

NALtech

The time it takes depends on your mechanical skills and your work pace. The first one I done took me 8 hours, now I can do them in about 4.

chelito92105

UPDATE:
While driving to and from work my SES light actually just turned off by itself and the car ran fine. However, I still checked everything.

I looked into the cylinders and did not see any coolant. The cylinders did however look black. Like a charred style but not thick or anything (this worried me a lot!) So I took the cat off and it is still in one piece. No metal pieces in it no nothing etc which makes sense since my oil level is constant.

Did a compression test and got 175 on cylinders 1-3 and 180 on #4. After putting the cat back on the car turned on fine. Left it off for a couple hours. Restarted it then the shuddering started again and this time it didn't go away. The SES light continued to flash (multiple cylinder misfire) and it then gave me an SES code P0302 (cylinder #2 misfire again).

Purchased some new NGK spark plugs, replaced them, and still the shuddering continued.

So in Summary:
Checked butterfly screws-all are still in place
Oil level constant, Pre-cat still in once piece, no coolant in cylinders.
Replaced spark plugs.

P0302 continues! Leading to car shaking like its about to turn off but dosen't.

Are cylinder heads supposed to be shiny? Someone suggested running some C-foam?

Any new ideas? All are welcome!

NALtech

The charred look is normal if it is a light black. Now dark black or wet black is BAD.......I hope you left ALL plugs out during the compression test. If so your getting air in the cylinders. Either way try moving #2 coil to any other cylinders and see if it changes as to where it is, if it does it's your coil. If it don't listen to the #2 injector with a screwdriver for a clicking sound.