awesomeissquid
SILVER Star
Today started like any other nice weekend with plans to leisurely work on the truck. On the agenda was replacing the spark plugs since their age was unknown. Starting with the passenger side it was going smoothly except for some slightly stuck plugs that took some coaxing. The horror show started at the rear most plug. The plug extracted easy enough, but looking down the tube I saw mangled bits of metal, cue some choice four letter words.
At first I figured this must be part of the spark plug threads, but looking at the plug I found that someone had mistakenly installed a tapered seat spark plug instead of a gasket seat one, cue more choice words. Side note, incase anyone is curious our trucks take gasket seat types and the two are not interchangeable. My first thought was that some of the taper seat had just broken off in the hole since I found a bit of jagged metal on the seat. Unfortunately, upon pulling the pieces out with a magnet, it appeared part of the threads in the cylinder head (I think?) had broken lose.
After calming down some I decided to continue cleaning out the hole to see how it looked. I got it as good as I could (slightly better than the over picture) and decided to use one of the other old "correct" spark plugs to see if it would even thread in. This seemed to work so I went ahead and installed the new plug. At the better judgement of my partner, I held off on starting the engine until I can get some advice. So now for the part where I ask for help, what do I do?
I figure there are two ways this could go. Option A, is the new spark plug is able to seat against whatever is left down there and will work fine. Option B is that the part (whatever it is) needs to be replaced. Looking at part diagrams this looks like it might require a full new passenger side cylinder head. Does anyone have any advice they would care to share? Since it was somewhat difficult to see due to other hard piping in the way I have been thinking about getting one of those scope cameras to stick it down there and take a look at it.
At first I figured this must be part of the spark plug threads, but looking at the plug I found that someone had mistakenly installed a tapered seat spark plug instead of a gasket seat one, cue more choice words. Side note, incase anyone is curious our trucks take gasket seat types and the two are not interchangeable. My first thought was that some of the taper seat had just broken off in the hole since I found a bit of jagged metal on the seat. Unfortunately, upon pulling the pieces out with a magnet, it appeared part of the threads in the cylinder head (I think?) had broken lose.
After calming down some I decided to continue cleaning out the hole to see how it looked. I got it as good as I could (slightly better than the over picture) and decided to use one of the other old "correct" spark plugs to see if it would even thread in. This seemed to work so I went ahead and installed the new plug. At the better judgement of my partner, I held off on starting the engine until I can get some advice. So now for the part where I ask for help, what do I do?
I figure there are two ways this could go. Option A, is the new spark plug is able to seat against whatever is left down there and will work fine. Option B is that the part (whatever it is) needs to be replaced. Looking at part diagrams this looks like it might require a full new passenger side cylinder head. Does anyone have any advice they would care to share? Since it was somewhat difficult to see due to other hard piping in the way I have been thinking about getting one of those scope cameras to stick it down there and take a look at it.