So, last night me and my friend were about to race a riced-out G2, and right when he was about to drop into third a noise happened, he pulled over thinking a flat tire, they were all in tact though, during idle the car sounded like a dual exhaust truck, air was "chugging" out of the valve cover, cops came, tow truck, BIG, LONG, messy story, anyways, he thought he blew a rod or something, today took off valve cover to discover a fricken spark plug blew up! i guess it was cracked nd moisture got into it, then detonated, causing us to lose miserbly, please explain if this sounds right. why would a spark plug make that much of a difference?!? the car could barely even idle, thanks for any input.

 

While I've never seen this happen, I guess everything's possible. Was it tightened properly?

If the plug was no longer intact the engine would have no compression and the a/f ratio would be way off. The pressure difference would screw up the flow to other cylinders as well, which explains why it ran so poorly.

I would replace all the plugs, and make sure the head didn't suffer any damage from parts of the plug.

 

if a plug goes bye bye, you will need to pull the head.

just try to start it with little chuncks in the chamber. LOL

 

I've had something similar happen to a used motorcycle I just bought. Riding around the day after I got it, there was a loud pop and it started running very rough. Come to find out, a plug had been cross-threaded and blown out of the hole stripping the aluminum threads. A heli-coil later and I was back in business, but it's definitely something to check, especially on vehicles with aluminum heads and deep spark plug sockets.

 

Missing one plug, the motor is off balance. 3 cylinders have to take up the slack for that one and push thru the unburnt air/fuel mixture.

If sparkplug bits fell in the motor, the damage was already done when the car was limping badly.

 

thanks everyone! yeah we took the head off, there was no pieces found in the block.....yet, but otherwise yeah, pulling EVERYTHING out, he's gonna get some new plugs/wires, hopefully it won't happen again! Thanks once again.

 

Yeah happened to a guy I work with - overtightened the spark plugs

 

Something similar happened to my old car---a '91 Celica GTS. I accidentally overtightened a spark plug and stripped it out....but I didn't know it at the time. So I go to get on the expressway and start to get on the throttle then...BLAM...my spark plug shot out of the hole and almost went thru the hood!! It left a reverse dimple in the hood that I never did get fixed. Any way...lets just say that I now own a Torque wrench.....