M_M

have you got your car fixed, and what was that?

evanswan

I put two new magencore wires on Cylinder 3 that was having the miss fires and everything ran great. Then 2 and 5 started missfiring. Replaced all the wires with new oem wires. Still having the issue. Put new coils on, still having the issue. Going to do all the plugs now and see. Hope to God that fixes it.

splinter

Did you catch up with Vadim at VRP about your disappearing coolant?

boohooramblers

Sorry to hear it's still an issue. How many miles do you have on your car?

evanswan

haven't caught up with him yet. I was about to get a pressure test done, and this issue popped back up. Can only fund 1 project at a time. I will keep you posted.

evanswan

I am at 64,000 miles now.

splinter

I hear that!

Mine’s at the same mileage. We’re hoping only the best for you.

JToups386

I'm assuming you either over rev'ed it, and/or detonated it. I've certainly broken my share of rocker arm assemblies in my Turbo Buicks by over rev'ing, before upgrading them to the higher rev capable race setup. Having been racing turbocharged cars since 1991, there is no worse enemy to an engine than detonation. If you're running more boost (and I assume you are), and not giving it the necessary additional fuel (at all times), then bad things start happening quickly. I'd want to see some bearing surfaces to see if they appear to have been pinged w/ a metal punch, ie showing signs of detonation.
As for the timing chain, it appears to have a nice double roller setup. Now, I cannot speak emphatically for the design and durability of the MB engine, however per my own usage of double roller setups on 2 of my Grand Nationals over the years, I've never seen one fail. They don't stretch, and I would find it unlikely you're having failure there. However, I'm not an expert on the Benz architecture.
Of course I'm probably not sharing any insight you are not already aware of, but maybe some other folks can learn from it. Either way, I'll be curious to see the final analysis of your engine failure, and how deep the damage goes.

Keep us informed...
J

Vadim @ FD

Which plugs are you runing?

evanswan

Pulled the plugs out. 2 of them have the material at the ends melted. I have the Denso Iridium IK20. I put those in the same time I put new Magencore wires on. My theory is the wires failed and opened up and over burned the spark plug or something. I'm going back to stock everything. Exspensive lesson.

jayitx

Disappearing coolant? I had the same problem, I think -- Coolant Level Low, but no leaking visible on the car or the ground? Engine misfires, etc.? Took it to the dealer under warranty. After 3 days of finding nothing (and trying to blame my Magnecor wires), they found that, in their words, "the intercooler was leaking coolant into the engine, and it was burning off." They told me it was all inside the engine and causing the plugs to misfire. They cleaned everything out, replaced the intercooler and all the plugs, and the problem was gone. Funny thing is, it didn't start to misfire until the day they were going to give it back to me because they couldn't find anything wrong. First starts in the morning smelled like leaking coolant, then nothing the rest of the day. Lucky for me it was all covered under warranty!

evanswan

I had the intercooler replaced with a Johnson pump, but haven't heard of that happening with anyone elses pump. Would make sense why my coolant disappears and I have to fill the resevior at least once a month all the way.

Vadim @ FD

Evan, stay away from Magnecor. I used to sell back in late90s. They would cause all kind of strange magnetic interference problems and fall apart after 10K miles.

evanswan

Vadim I will. Car runs like a champ now, I am back to stock plugs and wires. I was going to get the LET's but decided just put it back the way it was supposed to be. I will post pictures of the plugs tonight.

boohooramblers

For real?? Vadim - have you any more information about this and how prevalent it was? I'm pulling mine off if there is even a remote chance of this happening.

Vadim @ FD

Glad to hear. If you need any help, feel free to call. You know where to find me.

From 1994 through 2003, in my old shop, which is now evosport, I used to do a lot of tuning on everything from Fords to Hondas to Ferraris. When Magnecor first hit the market they were very aggressive in their marketing and willing to make custom sets. So I started selling a lot of their wire sets.

Installation and mail order. After selling close to 50 sets in several months, I start getting a lot returns on the wires with misfire complaints and customers coming back with strange electonic problems, after we installed the wires. On a number of sets boots just fell of the wires. Putting stock wires on solved the problem.

Magnecor blaimed the customers at first, than the installer, at which point I just told them "no thank you" and send whatever stock I had, back. They never paid me back.

To his day I hear people having problems with them.

JToups386

Melted spark plugs??? I'd be willing to bet my left arm you are detonating your engine by running too much boost and not enough fuel, for whatever the reason may be. Plugs don't melt w/o something causing extreme heat or cylinder pressure, which is typically caused by running too much boost and/or excessive compression, ie nitrous. Maybe this will turn out to be an isolated event, however I would be very curious to see if the problem returns due to the afore mentioned reasons.
If you had the ability to check your air/fuel ratio on a dyno it would certainly be to your advantage to eliminate that as being your cause.

In my own turbocharged applications I have had severe detonation that literally blew the end off spark plugs, melted spark plugs, and in one extreme case I blew the ring-land out of the side of a piston, which then melted itself smooth around the hole in the side of the piston. Again, this was all caused by excessive heat from over boosting the engine and not having enough fuel supply. This can be caused by various failures; ie 1. the fuel pump weakening, 2. not enough voltage to the pump, 3. the fuel pressure regulator failing, 4. too small of injectors --- all accompanied by excessive boost levels. Fortunately after having enough failures early in my turbo racing days, I finally learned to be absolutely sure I had ample fuel delivery, and testing my air/fuel ratio on the dyno at different boost levels to know what my maximum "safe zone" was. Being a supercharged setup, your boost is obviously dictated by the pulley size you are running, and relative to engine rpm's. However, even at stock boost levels you could still suffer detonation if any of those other items had failures or limited abilities. It's certainly worth looking into if you can.