So I decided to do the valve spring recall, and I told the mechanic to check my pressure plate & clutch while he took the engine apart. He did notice that the pressure plate was not torqued down correctly. Also the flywheel and the pressure plate had residual shipping oil on them. Next he told me that my clutch pedal was sitting too high, but I have never made any adjustment to it. The pedal was like that on the first day when I bought the car. Last but not least, he said there was a slight exhaust leak at the flange where the donut gasket is.
Anyway, the vibration did not go away after all the corrections. I talked to the mechanic over the phone, he told me he could not reproduce the issue, and I went about telling him that he would have to be around 1800 RPM @ 3rd gear then give the car a bit of gas, then he told me that it is not good for the engine to be at that low RPM and yada yada. I told him I understand it is not good for the engine to be at that low RPM, but the odd thing is that I have never experienced this vibration for the last 86k miles I have driven this car.
Fast forward to yesterday, I wanna record this vibration issue with my dashcam so I lugged the engine to about 1800 RPM @ 3rd gear then lo and behold I gave it a bit gas then the car started vibrating as expected so no big deal. However, the second time I tried to lug the engine with a bit more gas than before, instead of vibration noise I heard a
thud noise accompanied by
a shake of the car. I was freaked out by it, but there was no check engine light, and everything else still ran normal. In the beginning I thought maybe I drove over a big rock on the ground, but after checking my dashcam I was able to confirm there was no debris or anything like that on the road.
Here is the footage from the dashcam (sorry for the static noise from the dashcam):
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMyimzQL-_8"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMyimzQL-_8[/ame]
The first vibration is @ 7 seconds into the video, and the thud noise is @ 11 second into the video. Does anyone know what that thud noise could be?
Driving to and from work today was fine, no weird engine noise. Hopefully no major harm was done to the engine
. I will try to collect some datalog using OFT and report back in couple days.