well, i hadnt been hable to check out my car until this wekend because i have to drive it to class and work everyday. HOWEVER, over the week the knocking has started getting a lot quieter. on top of that, the strange vibrations, terrible sputtering, and what felt like a misfire to me- have all gotten better as the knock got better. even moreso, my gas mileage has been restored back to the way it was when i bought the car. and all i did was change the plugs... go figure.

ive got a decent theory as to what the knock was though, but it takes a little explaining. the knock seemed to be coming from near the top of one of the middle cylinders/in the combustion chamber. it was so quick that must have been the face of the piston been kissing the valves just a little bit. whenever i changed the spark plugs, i remembered i had meant to change one of them a long time ago but hadnt. back when i was 16 and didnt know what the hell i was doing, i changed my plugs and found out that someone had stripped out the spark plug hole on the #2 cylinder and that there was a plug with a much wider area w/ the threads than all the others. back then i thought it was a special plug that had been ordered, this time i knew it simply had a sleeve on it. i was also reinded of my previous inexperience whenever i checked the gap and all the champions i put in were at .050 (should be .039) and then the icing on the cake: the old plug with the sleeve that had about 30000 miles on it was at .070. wow., i wish i had a time machine so i could go back 3 years and smack myself in the back of the head. well theres my misfire.

the knock didnt immediately go away when i put the new plugs in, but as i mentioned previously the vibration, sputtering and power loss got considerably better, but everything was still kindof there. well since ive put the plugs in and driven it, all the symptoms have gotten a little bit better everyday. heres where my theory comes in: because the plug that i had in cylinder 2 was at .070 and had been for over 30000 miles, carbon had built up in the cylinder over time. im guessing the carbon had gotten so bad that the piston began to touch the valves just a little bit, causing the knock. whenever i put the plugs in and the cylinder started firing correctly, it cleared up some of the carbon which made the knock better, and the pistons became a little more balanced getting rid of the vibration.

sorry for the heavy reading, but id be interested in hearing anyones theorys as to how it actually got better. but considering the knock has gotten better as well as the other things, id be willing to bet that the spun bearing is out of the picture- along with a rebuild, and that makes me so goddamn happy i cant express it in words.

that being said, i still have the timing belt whine and the high pitched noise that sounds like brakes whenever i accerate hard (it sounds like its coming from my drivers side whenever im driving, but i cant hear it vey well whenever i sit in my driveway and rev it). the timing belt whine doesnt really concern me too much because i know i can take the cover off and check everything with a stethoscope, but the high pitched noise is what really concerns me. ive had my boss look at the car (hes worked on everything, these cars to ferraris to formula-v cars) and he couldnt figure out what it could be.

For anyone who was wondering, yes my user name is a joke.