Koreenium

It's almost inaudible. I have to be driving on some smooth road to really hear it. Any tricks to find any possible air leaks? On a quick look I did not notice anything obvious. Might need to get a vape pen. I did some monitoring with VCDS and noticed that on a cold start I get misfires basically only on the 1st cylinder. Which also happens to be the one cylinder where the spark plug had loosened itself over time. I also had hard time getting the ignition wire onto the 1st spark plug as if something was in the way. New wires looked just fine so it may be that the spark plug is damaged or something. I'll be checking that once the engine cools down. I did also get 1 misfire on cylinder 3. And when monitoring the misfires I noticed that VCDS only gives me options to observe misfires on cylinder 1,3,4 and 6 so cylinder 3 is actually 2? When monitoring misfires I can now definitely distinguish misfires from engine randomly jolting. So the jolts I feel are not misifres? What can they be?

I went on a test drive and ofcourse my laptops battery was empty so I couldn't use VCDS but cold start was still sluggish. And no matter in which gear I am, even very gentle acceleration from 1400rpm, engine starts struggling but at 1500rpm becomes smooth. I also noticed that as soon as I step on the gas, there is faint gushing noise and as soon as I let go, it stops. Perhaps this is normal?

I did the same thing but after a while stone chips have started peeling the paint off the chrome.

Yes. I usually change down and try not going below 1400 rpm but for whatever reason I remember it being smoother even at 1200rpm back when I got it. Maybe I just remember wrong as I mostly listen to fairly loud music when driving around. So perhaps it diluted my perception on how the engine is supposed to sound and feel. But I usually drove around city in 4th gear at 40-50km/h and it definitely lacked power when accelerating but like I said, I remember acceleration being smoother and less struggle for the engine. It still sounds like it's struggling in 3rd and 4th gear when rpm is below 1400. maybe slightly better than before. Now I'm mostly in 3rd gear for anything below 45km/h because the engine really does not like it otherwise. One of these things? I actually changed it just recently, after I started getting performance issues I noticed that oil was leaking around from the hole where it plugs into cam cover. I found out that the rubber grommet was actually split. Luckily I got it out without anything falling into the engine. It helped alot with poor engine performance but did not fix it completely. And after fixing this I started getting a significant oil leak from the oil separator. Which I'm going to be hopefully fixing soon. I have been running it more agressively lately. Especially considered that I have to downshift far more often now. Fuel consumption has definitely gone up. Before I averaged around 6.5L/100km but now I'm more around 7.5L/100km. If my math is correct. I was wondering if the rougher idling when engine was cold may have something to with soot build up on valves.

I'm going to check the gap on spark plugs and see if any of them are cracked, damaged.

I had battery disconnected for half an hour perhaps. Air filter is basically looking like brand new.

I replaced the ingintion wires with Bosch wires and replaced the ignition coil with BERU. Now the engine runs ever so slightly smoother and has slightly better acceleration at 1200-1400rpm. But first cold start had exactly the same problem and engine does not run any smoother when cold. If I immediately turn engine off after first cold start and start again, it starts up just fine. I have to check if I still get random intermittent misifires.

I had similar problem with my AC but I found out that it was intermittently blowing cold and warm air because the radiator fan had stopped working. After fixing the loose wire on the fan connector, it also fixed the problem with AC. But then months later the AC completely crapped out.

Thank you for the suggestions! I'll be replacing ignition leads and the ignition coil. I do have a special puller for removing the igniton leads. So this may fix performance issues but would this also affect the cold start like that? Because once the engine is warm, it starts and runs smooth.

Normaly starting the engine sounds nice and crisp. RPM jumps to 1400-1500 and comes slowly down. If the catalytic converter needs to be warmed up, engine is going to idle around 1100-1200 rpm for 20-30 seconds and then comes down to 650-700 rpm unless the AC is running in which case it comes down to ~900 rpm. But recently I got a new problem. Cold starts when the car has been sitting for 4+ hours, no matter what the temperature outside is, I get really sluggish engine start. RPM jumps to 1300 and immediately drops to 1000 or less. And instead of nice crisp start it sounds muffled, sluggish. And I can feel that the engine idles rough. A lot of small and some bigger jolts shake the cabin every few seconds. I used VCDS and noticed that there are maybe few misfires every now and then on all 4 cylinders at any random time but they don't seem to correspond to the jolts I'm feeling. After the engine warms up all of these problems go away. Engine starts nicely, no jolts, no misfires. Video of sluggish cold start: When the car has run atleast few minutes or has been properly warmed up by driving around: Things that I have done a while ago way before this started happening: 1) Changed spark plugs with Bosch Iridium FR6HI332. Old were decently clean and completely dry but warn out. Who ever changed the spark plugs prior used quite a lot of anti-seize on the threads. I just checked recently and the spark plug for the first cylinder had loosened itself and I retorqued them down to 25 Nm. 2) Changed faulty N80 EVAP purge valve/solenoid. No problems with it after that. Other problems I noticed around when this sluggish cold start started happening and overall poor engine performance. Engine block breather valve under the turbos pressure tube/pipe started leaking because the rubber grommet had split. I replaced the grommet, I got the whole thing out, and the one way breather valve itself. After that I noticed that the oil seperator had started leaking instead of just seeping oil. Also noticed that the AC compressor is seeping oil and it has been doing it for a while. No major leak there. What I have done after this problem started occuring: 1) Obviously replaced the split, leaking rubber grommet for the engine block breather valve. 2) Replaced engine oil but instead of regular 5W-30 I used 0W-40. 3) Cleaned the throttle body. 4) Used STP fuel system cleaning stuff. When cleaning the throttle body I also noticed that there is a lot of oil inside the inlet manifold. Not sure how much is coming from the turbo. Turbo seems fairly dry and there is fairly light coating of oil all the way to the throttle body. What I have read on some russian forum is that a leaking oil seperator and oil in the inlet manifold suggest there could be some sort of problem with the engines oil and oil vapor movement. Possibly a blockage somewhere? And some guy even suggested cleaning, replacing engines non return valve ( 03F103175A ) which I have not done yet. Also overall engine performance before the turbo kick in around 1600-1800 rpm seems to be poorer compared to before. And for example when I'm driving around 40 km/h in 4th gear and I want to accelerate then the engine starts to struggle. It makes quite loud, vibrating, rumbling noise and fades away as the speed increases. 1000-1200 rpm at 40km/h and it's rumbling up to around 1400-1500 and then it runs smooth. I'm pretty sure it was not like that before or maybe that's my imagination? RPM seems to be lower aswell when driving at a constant speed compared to before but I did not really pay much attention to this before so I might be wrong. Oh and only fault code I get is: "00819 fault code lower limit exceeded" but that seems to have something to do with the AC system. Anyway I need your help. Hopefully you can give me suggestions as what to do next. I also have VCDS so I can use that to check any values if that helps.

I never liked the look of the front so I was thinking about ways of changing it to look more appealing to me. First obvious thing was to paint, replace or remove front chromed trim around the grille. But that alone didn't do enough for me. I realised that I do not like how the front lights blend in with the grille so I decided to paint the small area on the sides of the grille, right next to the headlight. I think that alone made a huge difference. I have several low budget ideas more to hopefully further improve the look of the front. Plus some other modifications.

Does any of you know any additional safe jacking points for Rapid? Or perhaps any good tips on how to get it onto jack stands using the 4 jacking points? I need to get under the car but I don't trust lifting the front left corner up with just a floor jack and then working under the car. I don't need it to fall on my face which is already ugly enough.