 |
 | Home | Contact Us | FAQ | Search & Site Map | Link to Us |
 | Sign In | Join | Other 45 Sites in Network |
Car Forum / Acura Cars / January 2005broken spark plug - ceramic around electrode
My car wouldn't start the other day. Today I pulled the plugs and found that one of them had the ceramic broken off. The part that broke off is the portion in the cylinder around the electrode. I assume this would cause the plug to be unable to spark. I can't see any fragments in the cylinder, but I can only see a small portion of the piston. I had turned the engine over many times trying to start it. Any hope for it without removing the head. I was thinking I could hook a tube up to vacuum cleaner. Background info: '91 acura integra 180k miles I've been aware that it probably has a blown head gasket. I had slowly been loosing radiator fluid without any apparent leaks. About a month ago the car started running worse (choking a bit). Recently, I could see a bit of oil in the radiator. I'm guessing this was the cylinder that had radiator fluid leaking in. The spark plugs have probably been in longer than they should have been. Another question: My Haynes manual says the plugs should be replaced every 30k miles with conventional plugs one time and platinum the next. What's the rationale there? One other comment. Oil in the cooling fluid causes a dramatic reduction in the ability of the fluid to transfer thermal loads...After you get the head problem resolved, it is imperative that you have the cooling system completely flushed to remove any trace of the oil contamination. Make sure the shop that does it knows there was oil contamination in the fluid. If you don't do this, you have a greatly increased chance of overheating. Paul > One other comment. Oil in the cooling fluid causes a dramatic > reduction in the ability of the fluid to transfer thermal [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > > Paul Anything special involved in the flushing. I'd like to do it myself. --Art >> One other comment. Oil in the cooling fluid causes a dramatic >> reduction in the ability of the fluid to transfer thermal [quoted text clipped - 11 lines] > >--Art I would check with a radiator shop to see what they recommend. I assume you would put an additive in that ties up the oil and carries it out in the flush operation. Then refill with the recommended ratio of antifreeze and water. Since no two makes and models of cars use exactly the same types of materials in the cooling systems, I hesitate to recommend an exact procedure. I'm glad to see that you got the car running smoothly again. Modern spark plugs rarely crack their insulators unless they are grossly overheated or were damaged being put in the engine (dropped or hit or stressed by the socket). It is also possible that it was defective from the factory and the defect caused it to crack after repeated heat/cool cycles. You rarely know. With todays very high tension ignitions, those insulators work very, very hard. Early aviation pioneers would have been deeply envious of these plugs, which we take completely for granted! Their plugs rarely lasted more than 25-50 hours of running and some less than 10 hours..... Paul
|
Reply to this Message |
 Sign In
 Join
 My Latest Posts My Monitored Threads My Blog My Photo Gallery My Profile My Homepage Start New Thread Enable EMail Alerts Rate this Thread
|
©2008 Advenet LLC Privacy Policy - Terms of Use
This website includes both content owned or controlled by Advenet as well as content owned or controlled by third parties.