Last weekend a guy in our group pulled his plugs to check them out. Two of the plugs had tips broken off at the porclin. I've never seen or heard of this happening. Apparently this happened once before but only one plug broke. Does anyone know what could be causing this?
i hate to admit this but i have done that too. it from when you take the plug out you push to hard at a werid angle and it breaks them. or thats what i did http://free.***boat.net/ubb/frown.gif
Tyson www.plumbersassracing.com (http://www.plumbersassracing.com)
Yep that happened to me once before...guess when I installed the plug I torqued it to one side a little...not enough to tell it cracked. Anyhow the motor had a bad miss, only a mid and upper rps's...It would idel fine. Was pulling my hair out trying to find the proplem. And low and behold it was a hair line crack where the porclin entered the metal shell!...Ya could (just) feel it move when twisting the plug by hand...now I'm YERY carefull when installing plugs.
Erik,
Ty and Hammer are right on. As for the cause, it is probably related to his exahust setup. He probably has to attack the plugs from an off center angle to tighten or loosen them because its a tight fit to get around the exhaust manifold or header. This puts torsional stress on the porcelin which we all know doesn't like to flex. The solution should be as simple as making sure that his ratchet is as parallel as possible to the plane of the plug when he is wrenching. Depending on the situation, the solution might include removing the exhaust to change plugs. I would hope not, but I've seen some pretty tight setups that would be really tough to get a good angle on the plug with the exhaust in place.
Good luck,
Chris
All of the above is good advice. My twisted bassett caused me to break one, but I knew it when I did. Thankfully. I now am very careful when replacing them.
c19
I think you guys might be thinking of the wrong part of the spark plug. The part of the plug that broke is the tip where it sparks, inside the motor, not the part sticking out that the plug wire attaches to and you can get a wrench on.
It makes me wonder where the porclin & electrode tip went. Out the exhaust I guess.
[This message has been edited by Erik (edited July 08, 2002).]
Well then...what your refering to could very well be caused from detonation...not a very good thing for any motor to be doing. Check timming (total advance), fuel, not to lean! Also spark plug heat range...not to hot.
Now if we are on the same page...and if not solved, ya could very well be on the way to a motor melt down...not good!
Thanks HammerDown, I'll talk to my friend and recomend that he look into his timing & air/fuel mixture. I knew detonation was bad for a motor, but I've never heard of it doing that to a spark plug.
well this happned to me bubba and it wasn't pretty. it would happen to two separate cylinders, then it would run fine again. baught bore scope looked in #1,#8.and I could not find the top of one side of the piston. it must have made an exit some where along the line.
Broken spark plug pieces can be removed from the cylinder by putting together progressively smaller tubing on a shop vac till it fits in the plug hole , I went down to 1/8th and it worked great !
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