today sucks. i put in the new ngk plugs(ngk 9's), and then as i was merging into traffic about a mile from my house, i heard the tone of the motor change, slowed down and could tell one cylinder wasnt firing, and there was also a rattling sound. i had tools in the car, so i pulled the plugs and the number one plug is missing the tip. made a phone call, pulled it home, used a magnet to see if i could get anything out of the cylinder, got some little debri. and then did a compression test, "0" on number one, 180 on the rest. do you think that little peice could of put a hole in the piston? or broke a valve? will ngk do anything to help me?
i dont think i will be able to recover from this loss, i will be pulling the head tuesday to find out the extent of the damage. it was running great up until this.

 

that sucks, but you're not alone in having problems right now...i broke a timing belt and now the car is at the dealership, but even they can't get it started....good luck to you

 

Thanks. i always wondered why people sell there car after building it. its because they dont want to see it break, again.

 

thats really crappy.

The liklyhood of the tip of the spark plug causing a hole in the piston is not that great. The more obvious issue would be that when it got stuck in between a valve and the head when the valve when to close and bent a valve.

Either way, many of us understand how it feels to have to rip your freshly built stuff back apart after something stupid happens. Let us know the outcome, i'm interested.

 

i will defenitly post some pics, so everyone can see the carnage of one little peice of metal. but hopefully there is no carnage, and just an easy fix.

and it really sucks, because i never even got to actual feel what 463whp was like, my tach wasnt working, so i never got to rip through the gears....

 

the last time i saw a spark plug put a hole in the top of a piston was due to some severe detonation....

 

Do a leakdown test on it, I'd bet it got between a valve and its seat and put a divot in your valve seat. I've had it happen before, a couple of new seats/valves and I was back on the road.

 

i hope its something like that. i have a fresh head sitting, that was used on my b20/vtec, so that would be a easy fix.

 

it does seem unlikely that the broken plug would cause 0 comp.

Its gotta be stuck up top somewhere.

 

Joe, call me if you need any help...

Matt (one fab) had an incident where his valve keeper popped off the retainer, went into the combustion chamber, bent his valve, put a hole in the piston, came back out and screwed up his turbo..

It's scarry how little thing like valve keeper canm do that kind of carnage..

Keep me update Joe

stan

 

Just out of curiosity, how does a valve keeper get into the combustion chamber?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by rmcdaniels &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Just out of curiosity, how does a valve keeper get into the combustion chamber? </TD></TR></TABLE>

To this day we still couldn't figure it out..I have seen some crazy scenario here and there, this is def the weirdest...we couldn';t figure out what had caused it to get inside the combustion chamber or how for that matter...we found the keeper on the burn out box (we were in a race in NC) after it had come out the dump out exhaust..unless it was somebedy else's keeper, but very unlikely

 

i checked the keepers, they were all there

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by 93supercoupe &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">it does seem unlikely that the broken plug would cause 0 comp.

Its gotta be stuck up top somewhere.</TD></TR></TABLE>

and when i say zero comp, i mean the gauge doesnt move at all, doesnt jump or try to build any, none, zero, zilp, nada.

 

Hook your compressor to that cylinder to see what's going on. Either get a leakdown tester or an on-the-car valve spring changer adapter (probably not what it's really called, but I have one in my shop somewhere) for your compressor, but get some air into it and see where it's coming out.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Flamenco-T &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

To this day we still couldn't figure it out..I have seen some crazy scenario here and there, this is def the weirdest...we couldn';t figure out what had caused it to get inside the combustion chamber or how for that matter...we found the keeper on the burn out box (we were in a race in NC) after it had come out the dump out exhaust..unless it was somebedy else's keeper, but very unlikely

</TD></TR></TABLE>

I've dropped some of them when I'm changing out springs to degree cams, but they usually drop down an oil passage and end up in the oil pan. I'll have to make sure that I keep the spark plugs in it while I'm doing that in the future.

 

finally started taking things apart, found a good portion of the intake valve stem in the intake side of cylinder number 2. yes, the long piece in the first picture. and then one of the bottom exhaust mani nuts stripped, so i have pulled the head all the way off yet, but i took some pics of of the intake port. not good.

 

heat range 9 spark plugs will cause spark knock under boost, thats why everyone runs 7's. The spark plug gets so hot that ignites the mixture spontaneously IIRC

 

Man, that sucks.

 

Dang dude, no wonder you didn't have any compression in that cylinder. Good thing you shut it down and towed it home. You could have done some serious damage.

Doesn't look too bad though, but you won't really know for sure until you get the head off.

Good luck

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by ProjectDarkBlack &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">heat range 9 spark plugs will cause spark knock under boost, thats why everyone runs 7's. The spark plug gets so hot that ignites the mixture spontaneously IIRC</TD></TR></TABLE>

The only problem with that logic is that his car is tuned on NGK 9's so it should not have spontaneously ignited. Plus, 7's are probably too hot of a plug for his application...hence the need to 9's at his power level.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by ProjectDarkBlack &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">heat range 9 spark plugs will cause spark knock under boost, thats why everyone runs 7's. The spark plug gets so hot that ignites the mixture spontaneously IIRC</TD></TR></TABLE>

9s are colder than 7s.

 

so i guess the question is, did the plug break and cause this, or did something else break and the plug was just another tragedy of the whole situation
dun dun dun.....to be continued

 

and also it didnt happen under full load, maybe 7ish psi as i was merging into traffic, everything was smooth up until the point of breaking.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by 2redstars &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">so i guess the question is, did the plug break and cause this, or did something else break and the plug was just another tragedy of the whole situation
dun dun dun.....to be continued</TD></TR></TABLE>

It's going to be hard to tell until you get into the block.

If it makes you feel any better, I bought a brand new Garrett turbo and a few miles after installing it a booger came off of my turbo manifold and destroyed the turbine blades. I had to buy a whole new CHRA with turbine wheel, shaft, and compressor wheel, because when the turbine blades broke off it came out of balance and both wheels made contact with the housings.

Anyways, yeah, so that was an expensive lesson.

It happens though, but it's always worth it once you get all the kinks worked out of it.