Help! From check engine light to fouled plugs back to check engine + plugs refouling
 

Hi all,


Ill start with its a 2013 BRZ ive owned the whole way, 45k on it. Driving back from hockey one night the check engine light came on. Dutifully I went to the dealership the next day, they said something about an issue with engine imbalance and they would need it for a full day and I could drive it the few days in between. They have now had it for 1.5 days and called me to say its running "better" that the spark plugs were fouled and then questioned if I had been putting premium in. I have only EVER filled up with Shell V-power, which is 91. They are going to keep looking at it.
I'm not exactly a gear head, so any help understanding what is going on would be much appreciated. I am worried in general about wtf is going on, again since I have only EVER put 91 into it. Should I be concerned about other possible related issue, now and down the road, and is there anyway to gather evidence from the car that I can go after the dealership for faults or even Shell for faults.
I have occasionally switched between sport modes, and its an automatic fyi.
Thank you in advance.

:popcorn:

Your car will be fine. You are overthinking it. The dealership will take care of it and fix the issue.

Shell V-Power is 93, if I am not mistaken.


Either way, I am sure your car will be fine. Pay attention to it when you get it back - just do not let that morph into paranoia.

It's 91 in these parts ........ ;)


humfrz

+1 91 here. I used to run it until I went full retard and use 94 now

Petro Can Petro Can you're the only one with 94 octane (spiderman theme)...around here anyways!


Why wouldn't you use 94 octane if it's avl, the diff in price is negligeable and there aren't any downsides :)

I only use 94 and the way my car is tuned I cant run 91 or it pulls timing and I cant go down to sea level anymore either lamo (hence the full retard part)

WTF you can't go at sea level??(I'm puzzled by that statement). I'm also tuned for 94, although I do have a 91 tune somewhere in the ecutek shit in case I'm in no 94 land. Summer is around the corner :) time to start shopping gauges and log some runs to get a revision done on my 94 tune :)

Nice to think positive but you can not count on that! Just the fact that they tried to already blame him by questioning the octane of the gas he uses tells me they are already hunting for an excuse not to cover the work.

If the dealer ever says something about blaming you, tell them to piss off and look for another dealer.

Your under maintance and the only thing you done is fill up the gas and oil, you have no fault. Sounds to me like the dealer is trying to pull a fast one on you.

There has been a few owners that reported defected ignition problems. With cars under 2k miles.

And FYI here in California our top octane is 91.

They are just asking questions doing their job making sure the issue isnt caused by something silly like that before they dig deeper into the issue. I am sure he will be fine

It'll be fine, relax bro

Technically the car can still run on 87, but you just won't get the same power. The car isn't going to explode with 87. The car has knock sensors and if it detects knock, it will retard the timing.

If they say it's the gas and you didn't use 91 and caused the car to blow up, we'll that means the car has a problem and won't detect engine knock so it's they need to fix the car.

Smells cattle excrement they feed to their average customer so they can charge what they want. Fouled spark plugs stopped being common 5 years before I was born. Ask for the code that was stored on the ECU that caused the check engine light. There is zero reason why they should deny giving you that number. If they don't have it then they can't fix a problem they aren't aware of and are, again, bullshitting you by keeping your car if they aren't doing anything about it.

For background fouled spark plugs mean that the air fuel ratio is incorrect, this is tightly controlled by your ECU, O2 sensors, timing and fuel injection systems. If your spark plugs are fouled and they aren't replacing or changing one of those things they're either feeding you bullshit or being lazy about fixing it. For any one of those things to go bad before 150k miles on a modern car at the earliest is nearly unheard of.

Throttle body and injector cleaning are snake oil.