I have a 2001 Accent that just started doing something new. I heard this electrical pop sound and when I opened the hood I could see a nice whiteish-blueish spark occuring along the outside diameter of the crankshaft pulley; at first I contributed it to static because it was really dry out that day. However it has continued; did some more testing and found that it is very consistent; at idle it occurs about every 3 to 4 seconds and as I rev the engine it occurs faster. I have looked for loose wiring, cannot find anything; been under the hood in the dark to see if a plug wire was arcing, nothing. Has anybody else seen this or know if there is a sensor there may be bad or have a bad ground?

I do know one thing that it is a very strong arc; after you shut the engine off if you do not discharge the pulley against ground and you touch the pulley it will give you one hell of a jolt.

Ideas anyone?

T

 

So the pulley is arcing, but where is it arcing to? The body? Yeah, it's weird.

Maybe the ground is bad. You can test it by creating a temporary ground from the block to the body.

 

I don't see it physically arcing to the body, I just see this spark happening on the pulley; however I can discharge it once the engine is off by touching the pulley and the body at the same time with something conductive and I can see the same type of spark when I do this. I was thinking about a ground as well because it seems like the engine is holding a "charge" like a capacitor; maybe the main battery ground is flaky. Maybe I can figure out a way to upload a video of this happening.

 

New symptom this morning; Check Engine Light came on. I drove the car all the way to work with the light on and the car ran fine; I put a code reader on it and P0300 (random misfire) came up and that was the only code. Also, once I got to work before I turned the car off I popped the hood and there was no arcing; however once I let the car set a bit and started it back up I had the arcing back.