Went to go warm it up today, started up fine, but a little slow...

Next thing I knew the idle was really rough, sounded almost like a techno beat.

Once the car warmed up a little bit, I noticed the check engine light flashing,

Blackish sulfur smelling smoke coming out of my exhaust, and it was sending black dropplets (Carbon?) coming out of the exhaust...

Now looking at the car, my exhaust pipe has ice built up halfway up the pipe, made the snow pretty messy and the car just doesn't want to go anywhere...

Pics below.

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Any ideas? It's a stock 2009 cobalt with no mods no tunes. Unfortunately I don't have a code reader, but the engine looks like it was misfiring.

I'm assuming I'm just going to have to take it in, but any ideas you can give me would be great first.

Thanks!

 

unfortunately nobody in the world can give you a 100% diagnosis without atleast the code. If it is an 09 you are still in power train warranty at least, so get it to the dealership, it sounds like a serious engine problem.

 

Based on that info all I can tell you is a bad catalytic converted will cause you exhaust to smell like sulfur, and it will make the car rev slow, and have a huge power loss. If its clogged bad enough the car won't move under its own power without stalling. Hope that helps, but really just have the dealer fix it.

 

ha ha ha ha ha. first off. your car has a flashing light which is a misfire issue sayinbg your ******* the cat up so dont run your engine, second off if its cold out side, and it has a bad idle and ect its more likely then bad gas or a bad coil. if you rev it up and it goes away i say its either one of these, bad coil, bad plugs, bad gas, and or a faulty ecm. only way to tell is take it to the dealer

btw the cat might be bad now but the cat wasnt what was causing that lol

 

Thanks for the advice. I figured that our would be out of my control. I guess ill be calling the dealer tomorrow to get everything fixed up.

 

I had a flashing cel and loss of power and it turned out to be bad gas, funny it even cautions you in the owners manual of such an occurrence. As for the carbon being emmitted by the exhaust, I'm not sure if that occurred with the bad gas but something very similar happened when I blew my stock hotside pipe apart. It wouldn't run at all, I had to floor it just to keep it running...serious ecm misread Had to have it towed in.

 

The carbon could be from bad gas is suppose. The ECU would have to compensate for the bad gas by basically flooding your motor so it wont knock. Better that than burning a ring I suppose.