Hi, folks. While driving my car today all of a sudden it started making a really loud noise. It sounded like a hole in the exhaust pipe, or perhaps like the exhaust had come off the engine altogether. When I got it home and put it up on stands, though, I couldn't see any leak or hole from below. What I could see was a blue flame occaisionally coming from the viscinity of the #3 cylinder, which is definitely where the noise is coming from. But the flame was only visiblle from above, from somewhere under the tin. Because of the tin I could not tell if it was coming from the spark plug hole or not, but it seems to be below that. The blue flame is not visible from below. The spark plug seems to be tight; when I unplug that plug that flame goes away and most of the noise (though of course it runs rough on 3 cylinders).

Anyone want to tell me this is a cheap, easy fix?

What year/engine do you have?

From the top, where exactly are you seeing the flame? Cooling tin blocks your vision of almost everything from the top so unless its comming from around the intake manifold I am not exactly sure where you would see a flame.

Could be the air injection port used on later models. I believe the port tube is only pressed into the head.

It is a 1976 2.0. It is really hard to tell because of the tin, as you say. I also have dual Webers in the way, so that does not help. I can see the flame through the hole in the tin for the spark plug wire, but can't see where it is coming from. It seems to be below the spark plug hole. I definitely can not see it around the exhaust.

It definitely started all at once as I was driving, as if something had come loose or been blown out.

If the air port plug, that happened to me about 10 years ago. Easy fix for me was to pull a second plug, go to Ace and buy the same thread pattern and cut the rest of the bolt off. Put in the new plug with some lock tight and never worried about it again.

If your heads are like mine, they might have plugged the hole for the air injection with a threaded pipe plug.

It could have come out or is loose.

Other than that, I would say blown head gasket?

Stu

There are a few threads here on this. Here are a couple:

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?showtopic=138327

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?act...p;f=2&t=474

Thanks, that is very helpful. After reading about the air intake I looked in the bay againn and found a stud laying there tucked below the carb. I took a photo of it and think I have attached it.

That was definitely it. Thanks a ton, folks -- I never would have figured that out on my own.