Recently I was having to do a lot of different repairs and mods on my LC of which one was an EGR delete which I won’t go into details here as it’s covered in several others posts. While doing this though I discovered all of the carbon build up at the intake and it was significant. I would say it was 75% blocked, easy enough to clean up and one of the many reasons for doing the delete. I was waiting on some other parts to arrive anyway and even though my glow plugs were not even a year old and hadn’t had that many miles on them I figured I would remove them and inspect them as they would also be affected by this carbon build up. So I know all about the pitfalls of removing anything old and the proclivity of glow plugs to break if your not careful in removing them. These had been nstalled by a local shop (which I will NEVER use again) when I had it in there for some bodywork and painting. It was hard to start so they wanted a set of glow plugs (not the problem) which I gave them after they said I could not do it, they had to (and charged me 10000¥ for it, 100$).
NO 1 came out as advertised and didn’t look bad.
NO 2 seemed in the beginning like it was coming out fine, no snapping noises no excessive torque required to remove it, however, this is what I got once it seemed like it was out.
as you can see, the tip (electrode) was no longer attached to the base of the glow plug, only the wire lead from the base to the tip. CRAP!! Next up, YouTube lol, no luck there with this scenario as most people deal with them snapping off at the threads. I happen to have a shop nearby run by Americans dealing specifically with Landcruiser up grades mods and repairs (BTW at this point I tried no3 and same thing happened but no4 came out fine) and showed them what happened and asked if they had run into this before, they had not. Apparently many here on the island (Okinawa) remove them and plug off ports. They said as I had surmised to remove the head or possibly put piston in the down position and try knocking tip in and removing it via the injector port (this was done in a YouTube video but on a different vehicle) I wasn’t thrilled about removing the head a didn’t think the other option was doable on this head. Went back to house, looked in my tool collection for ideas. I had been soaking these glow plug ports with good ole PB Blaster and it had seeped down and exposed the top of the electrode.
It was hollow, ok now the gears started to turn and I grabbed my set of hardened steel screw extractors and selected the one that would fit the opening. Pulled on the wire till it snapped off thankfully at base of electrode. Problem now was the normal T handle for the extractor was not going to work in the confines of this area. Got my needle nose vise grips and they turned out to be perfect, clamped them to the extractor and re lubed the opening with PB and SLOWLY started turning back and forth and applying upward pressure. I could feel it give finally and after about 10 minutes, voila, it came out!!
Did the same with no3 with the same results and just a little less time. My guess is that two things led to this happening, 1 carbon build up around the tip and Japanese mechanics don’t use torque wrenches or follow proper torque settings, they just crank everything down has hard as they can. Hope this helps someone in the future avoid my angst.
NO 1 came out as advertised and didn’t look bad.
NO 2 seemed in the beginning like it was coming out fine, no snapping noises no excessive torque required to remove it, however, this is what I got once it seemed like it was out.
as you can see, the tip (electrode) was no longer attached to the base of the glow plug, only the wire lead from the base to the tip. CRAP!! Next up, YouTube lol, no luck there with this scenario as most people deal with them snapping off at the threads. I happen to have a shop nearby run by Americans dealing specifically with Landcruiser up grades mods and repairs (BTW at this point I tried no3 and same thing happened but no4 came out fine) and showed them what happened and asked if they had run into this before, they had not. Apparently many here on the island (Okinawa) remove them and plug off ports. They said as I had surmised to remove the head or possibly put piston in the down position and try knocking tip in and removing it via the injector port (this was done in a YouTube video but on a different vehicle) I wasn’t thrilled about removing the head a didn’t think the other option was doable on this head. Went back to house, looked in my tool collection for ideas. I had been soaking these glow plug ports with good ole PB Blaster and it had seeped down and exposed the top of the electrode.
It was hollow, ok now the gears started to turn and I grabbed my set of hardened steel screw extractors and selected the one that would fit the opening. Pulled on the wire till it snapped off thankfully at base of electrode. Problem now was the normal T handle for the extractor was not going to work in the confines of this area. Got my needle nose vise grips and they turned out to be perfect, clamped them to the extractor and re lubed the opening with PB and SLOWLY started turning back and forth and applying upward pressure. I could feel it give finally and after about 10 minutes, voila, it came out!!
Did the same with no3 with the same results and just a little less time. My guess is that two things led to this happening, 1 carbon build up around the tip and Japanese mechanics don’t use torque wrenches or follow proper torque settings, they just crank everything down has hard as they can. Hope this helps someone in the future avoid my angst.
