Celica down. Champion plugs suck, Help me figure out my next move Options

[enderswift]

Hey 6gc,

I would like your opinion on how to go about taking care of the trouble a champion plug has unleashed on my #4 cylinder. BTW i have a 99 5s. Here's the story:

I was driving back home from the gas station a little while ago when I heard a pop followed by a thhack thhack thhack that matched my revs. I killed the engine and pulled over right away. When i popped the hood i saw that my spark wire was sticking out of the valve cover. my first instinct was that the threads in the head broke and that my spark shot out. When i looked in there however it was still screwed in. So i assumed it had simply gotten loose and was letting some of the compression escape, thus pushing the wire out. From there i decided to limp the whole 3 block back home when the thhack sound turned into a thhack rattle sound. I killed the engine again and this time decided to walk my ass home and get some tools.

Once i got the tools and got the sparkplug out, this is what I found:




The insulation surrounding the electrode completely disintegrated and is probably lying on top of my piston at the moment. Nothing like little bits of ceramic to score up your cylinder walls



im not sure if you can tell from the picture, but the whole tail end separated from the thread and is most likely the source of the original thhack sound I was hearing. Thats not rust by the way, thats caked on oil from the leaky seals i mentioned earlier.

My mistake was assuming it had only come loose, at which point the insulation probably shattered causing the complementary rattle. Good thing I shut the engine off. Im going to be optimistic and say the cylinder walls/rings/valves weren't damaged by this.

All that said, here's my dilemma as I can go about this several different ways:

1. start the car without the #4 the spark plug and try to get the shards to fly out of the hole (Im not a fan of this but I've see it done)

2. Take apart the whole top half of the engine and investigate/clean. ( I priced all the gaskets and head bolts to around $150 and I could probably get it done in ~ 4 hours. how do you guys feel about Felpro BTW?)

3. Rig up a vacuum attachment and try to clean things out that way, since a magnet obviously wont help and the opening is too small to use an oil soaked rag. When i say vacuum attachment, I'm thinking to taping a large diameter straw to the end of my vacuum and stuffing it into the cylinder to suck up the loose bits. Its a little hokey but the more I think about it the more I like it.

I can post pics of the vacuum if you guys are curious haha

This post has been edited by enderswift: Mar 20, 2010 - 8:30 PM

[Bitter]

you need to pull the head, you could have done some bad damage to the cylinder, piston, or most likely the valves/head itself.

[enderswift]

you need to pull the head, you could have done some bad damage to the cylinder, piston, or most likely the valves/head itself.

yea i know the potential for major damage is there, but im hoping the brittle ceramic is softer than the metals of the combustion chamber, also the fact that this is a non-interference engine helps out a little too. Im going to try to clean it out as best I can with the vac, then run a compression test.

anyone have a similar experience? doesn't have to be with a celica specifically, I've just never seen a spark plug shatter like this. I wasn't even accelerating! just cruising down the road...

[bdawgbp1]

Bitter is right - you definitely need to pull the head. Bring that it is a non-interference engine doesn't mean that further damage has not occurred. More than likely potential damage is minimal - if any - and pulling the head will be well worth the easement on your mind. You would hate to not pull it thinking everything is ok and later down the road cause damage to your cylinder, piston, or head/valves. Felpro is good for a gasket set - I have a 94 GT that I just did full tune-up (plugs, wires, coil, cap, button) on including valve cover gasket and tube seals (mine was doing the same thing - leaking oil trough the tube seals. Valve cover gasket was fine and not leaking but I figured what the heck, might as well replace it with the seals.). Haven't seen any leaks from the Felpro gaskets or tube seals.

I'm just curious - why were Champion plugs installed instead of the OE NGK Laser Platinums (BKR6EP-11)? Just for future reference about the only thing I MAY be Champion plugs in would be my lawnmower!

[Bitter]

you need to pull the head, you could have done some bad damage to the cylinder, piston, or most likely the valves/head itself.

yea i know the potential for major damage is there, but im hoping the brittle ceramic is softer than the metals of the combustion chamber, also the fact that this is a non-interference engine helps out a little too. Im going to try to clean it out as best I can with the vac, then run a compression test.

anyone have a similar experience? doesn't have to be with a celica specifically, I've just never seen a spark plug shatter like this. I wasn't even accelerating! just cruising down the road...

you'd think, but no. a chunk of ceramic between the valve and valve seat can create a divet and then as the engine runs more that little spot gets bigger and the valve and seat both burn and you have no compression, a misfire, and guess what? have to pull the head. better to do it now and fix it right.

[Remy]

NGK or denso don't get those cheap walmart champion plugs...I guess u learn the hard way lol

[enderswift]

well I'm exhausted. Its almost 4 am and I've spent the last ~6 hours cleaning out that cylinder. After some trial and error I found that pouring oil into the cylinder allowed me to suck up the porcelain relatively easily. What I did was pour in the oil, mix things up to suspend the shavings before sucking them out with the vac. I did this for hours using a total of 4 quarts of oil going about a tenth of a quart every time. The vacuum contraption worked out to be a combination of a clear bleeder line attached to a funnel together with a shop vac. It worked reasonable well and I was able to see my progress. After a while I couldn't get any more bits to flow through the hose no matter what I tried. Now before I go on I know all of this sounds halfass but it worked well and Im going to consider this as one of those creative engineering solutions my professors are always pining on about. Anyway, I replaced all four spark plugs with NGKs and started the car. After an initial cough it started up and fell to a smooth silent idle. To say I was ecstatic would be an understatement. A quick spin to check things out and burn off the oil from the combustion chamber seemed as ordinary as ever. I'm not going to get lulled into a false sense of security though, I'm going to do a compression test tomorrow morning to determine if I want to take the head off and rebuild it or not.

I'm just curious - why were Champion plugs installed instead of the OE NGK Laser Platinums (BKR6EP-11)?

When I originally installed those plugs I was a broke college freshman, even more so after the $3000 down payment for the celi. So I did as best a tune-up as i could afford and at the time the ngk's were waay too pricey (they were on sale today though ).So I choose the champions since I worked at advance auto and never had anyone come in saying they sucked. Plus they were better than anything else we had in stock (bosch, autolite, ect..)

you'd think, but no. a chunk of ceramic between the valve and valve seat can create a divet and then as the engine runs more that little spot gets bigger and the valve and seat both burn and you have no compression, a misfire, and guess what? have to pull the head. better to do it now and fix it right.

I cant agree enough, and after last semesters strength of materials class i know exactly what a small imperfection in a stressed machine part can lead to (especially one that works under extreme temperatures). That said I do plan on disassembling the engine eventually but for now I want to see if I can get by until I can land a nice internship to pay for everything. If compression ends up out of line then ill have to do it now. Otherwise I'll wait.

thanks for the replies everyone, ill update with the compression numbers soon. time to collapse into bed.

[ZC_6Gen]

Anything not NGK or Denso will make your car run not the way it suppose to. Especially imports. I've experienced it with many of my cars.
Just recently a friend got his 6gc out from a shop. He got home fine. Then he tells his car idles funny and he wanted me to a adjust the idle air. I listened to the car as he gave it some gas. 2000 rpm and above it sound ok but with little sputters. But when at normal idle you can tell its sputtering really bad. I told him its misfiring because of fouled plugs. Little did we know while test driving the CEL came on. Went and bought some NGK's and replace it with the cheapo's that where installed. Ran perfect after a few seconds of start up. CEL still stored in ecu, scanned it and cleared misfiring code. Never came on since. So dont go cheap on the plugs especially for imports. It can cause other money eating problems like frying your distributor.$2.49 each for some ngk will save you time and $$$. Just my .2 cents.

[enderswift]

So I ran a compression test after driving the car this morning and was pleased with what I saw:

the reading were roughly 190 across for all four cylinders

those numbers are 11 lbs over spec as my manual says i should be getting 179 psi so it is a little strange... The important thing is consistency between cylinders which is exactly how it should be for an engine with ~ 80k.

despite the good readings I'm still going to pay close attention to that engine in case any underlying problems surface.

Thanks for your input guys

[Agent21]

NGK and NGK ONLY on all toyotas, nissans, damn near anything. Including the wires. racepages.com actually has all the stuff for reasonably cheap as nopi is no longer selling the stuff.