Lucas Friedrichsen wrote:

> Hello all

> thank you for suggestions on detonation problem earlier.

> It seems that it was exhaust noise, I had #3 upper exhaust nut loose

> and NONE on #4 ahh.

> So now that those are installed, there is NO tick tick tick noise,

> that sounded like detonation to me.

> Just the sweet sound of engine, and turbocharger! :)

> Plus I checked all the plugs, they are fine and have normal

> combustion byproducts on them.

Glad to hear that it was an easy fix. Its always nice to only put in a couple of minutes to get results...

> After being in boost for a while, then driving about 100 feet and

> parking I checked the exhaust manifold. It had a light glow at the

> collector. It was an oragnish, not

> bright. This is normal yes, due to the heat and turbo and such?

Probably fine. It depends on how bright exactly it is. One of my friends has a 244ti like mine and initially his was glowing like it was a freeking comet or something. He played with the a/f ratio and it doesn't glow nearly as much now. I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. Might be a good idea to have a shop set the a/f ratio to stock sometime in the future.

> Also, I saw some blue sparking on plugs 2 & 3 , this has me very

> concerned as I should not see anything like that. I also saw it

> moving through the plug wires on top

> of the valve cover. Why would they only be on 2 & 3 plugs? Seeing

> the sparks I mean. There is no apparent pattern to them showing up

> either. The engine stumbles

> a bit more when I see more blue spark. It is quite erratic, the spark

> and the path it does take.

> Could this be ignition cross talk when seeing them over the valve

> cover?

Huh. Was it dark out when you were looking at this? For some reason I have a recollection of seeing this when it was dark out... Sorry got side tracked. Thats pretty odd about those wires...well wires are something that should be changed anyways I guess. I just used 'Blue Thunder' ones or something like that, they are low resistance 8mm(I think...) and have a lifetime warrenty. Hehe I already cashed it in once. I'm sure the Magnacore wires are great too.

> This new problem has me almost as concerned as the detonation

> problem.

> What hurts is you work on something, think you have it fixed when

> most of the time you do and then another arises. Hard to make real

> progress when that happens.

> At least I am doing it, and I am learning as go!

Well as my high school history teacher told the whole class, "Life is a *itch and then you die." Heh, don't worry about it. My car complains by breaking one thing or another right before I do mods all the time.

Yeah, I'd go ahead and do the wires. Maybe replace the plugs, cap and rotor while you are at it. Something that you were probably planning on doing anyway right?

Laters,

Will