Did I do any long term damage?!?!?

89LXNotchPI

New Member
May 28, 2005
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Washington
Just found out that my stang has been running on 7 cylinders for about the last 3 months, maybe longer. Just wondering if I will suffer any long term consequinces from this or will it run like it did before the fouled wire/plug/dist. cap? PLease help put my mind at ease. Thx a bunch!
 
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Jeff7477 said:
I don't see any problem with it. Its still getting the same amount of lubrication....it just wasn't firing.
well the spark plug wasn't firing, but the injectors were prob. squirting a lot of fuel in that cyclinder which wasn't getting burnt off. Not sure what that does for rings, but i'm sure some of it went through the exhaust and, if you have catalyctic convertors on the car, maybe wasn't the best for those - depending on the amount of miles put on the car w/ that condition. I'd also hazzard a guess that a good portion of that raw fuel made it's way past the rings into the crankcase and polluted your oil. I'd change the oil ASAP if you haven't.

I suppose you could do a compression check or leak-down test to see if it damaged rings...I really don't know how much damage this could have done, just trying to do some semi-educated guessing.

I would have thought you would notice a cyclinder not firing...didn't the car run like crap? Do you have any check engine codes?
 
Negligence on my part...no codes however. The car was running poorly, but once it was warm it seemed to run fine. 7 of 8 cylinders didn't make that much difference. But I should've noticed sooner, all I can do now is damage control.
 
one time I had a mouse that kept biting through one my my injector wires on my v8 Jeep, so I effectively had 7 cyclinders and it ran like crap. Definately probably wouldn't hurt to clean the o2 up and be sure and reset the computer if you do - ask you suggested. I'm not sure of the technical method to cleaning them - if there even is one - but I've pulled them and burnt the junk off w/ a propane torch for about 5 minutes letting it glowing red repeatedly. Remember to put anti-sieze back on the threads before reinstalling, but be careful to not get it on the actual sensor part...that's hard to do for me.

Good luck.
 
Glad to hear you got it worked out. If you want some peace of mind, do a compression check, and see how that 1 cylinder stacks up against the others. If you're getting too much gas in there, then it could have been washing the cylinder walls. You might have messed up your rings, although it's not too likely.