So up until yesterday, my Evo had been down for almost two months. In late August I was cruising back to my new crib, nice and easy Sunday drive. Come off a 4-way stop in the middle of BFE, accelerate nice and easy, shift into second and ... BAMMM!!! ... PRRRRRRRRR..... car loses a lot of power and sounds like a$$. Great! I think, another popped IC hose. I pull over into the grass strip, shut off the car and pop the hood. Check all the hoses ... no popped hoses. Damn. Fire up the car again and ... PRRRRRR.... car sounds like total $hit. Definitely lost at least one cylinder, so now I'm thinking blown engine, although no new 'inspection holes' are visible and there are no leaks anywhere. Not much I can do at this point other than to have it towed home...

Now I have to put up with all of the flak from my wife ... wants me to sell the car, it's a money sucking POS, etc. blah blah blah. You married guys know the drill.
Doesn't help that we had just moved into a new house and hadn't sold the old one yet (thank God that it finally did sell last month). Keep in mind that all of the work on the car has been performed by AMS over the past few years and I'm super **** about maintaining everything on my car. Needless to say I was pissed at the time. So I contact Martin at AMS to let him know what had happened. He told me to bring it in, and they'd figure out what happened. Unfortunately between AMS moving, us moving, and my travel schedule (got to drive on the Nurburgring, woot!, but that's another story) I didn't get a chance to drop the car off until this Monday.

So finally, with much trepidation, I dropped the car off at 2pm (tow again, ugh) on Monday and filled in the rest of the guys at AMS as to what had happened. Later that afternoon I got a call from AMS with the news ...

... the verdict: the cylinder 3 spark plug had come loose and popped out (hence the loud bang). Car was fine. Total cost: 1 hour labor. LOL.

For once I can thank my lucky stars. Guess I will add checking the spark plugs to my usual maintenance routine. Big thanks to AMS for not only providing fast service, but for also always maintaining their professionalism.

Now I just have to figure out how to get my car over to the 'Ring.

l8r)

 

 

Did it rip the threads out of the head or just slowly work it's way loose from vibration?

It's weird that the spark plug or coil wouldn't have kept it from turning that much to pop out unless the plug was never tightened at all.

Either way glad it was an easy fix for ya and nothing catastrophic.

 

I dis-agree with this. i think the person may have torqued them, but i have also seen plugs come loose too after they have been tightened.

in my experience, it is always best to seat the sparkplug sealing rings ~3 times....meaning torque, loosen, torque, loosen, torque loosen, torque.

the nature of the sealing rings is to take up any iregularites @ the hole. that sealing rings is compressable & if your making some decent power, its possible to work the plug & sealing rings in a fashion to where it can come loose over time.

now, if new plugs were put in ~2 weeks prior, then it waas an assembly error.

 

Count on AMS to get the brain teasers done.

Just kidding!!

Any lesser shop surely would have gone ahead and torn down the motor or something worse and charged you a fortune!

Way to look out, AMS!

 

ooo, very lucky, I will be sure to check that too, on my maintenence routines also, I'm glad it wasn't nothing big though bro.

 

hahaha, i had the exact same thing happen to me this last summer. driving to work in the morning, pulled next to a mustang, went WOT and BANG. my car sounded like a lawn mower. blew the spark plug out and destroyed the coil wire above it. a few hours later, new spark plugs, a new coil, and a new wire, and it was back to running great

it had been about 10,000 miles from when i put the plugs in to when it happened, so its not like they were not installed correctly. they just worked loose (one popped out, one was loose, the other two were good).

i check em regularly now

 

im going to check mine first thing in the a.m.......... no garage/light FTL

 

doesn't that wife thing get old in a hurry. they seem to know exactly how much is invested without seeing a darn receipt.

 

It is great relief to know others suffer as I

 

Oh yeah, spark plugs are 29Nm and never reuse them (one time crush washer) LOL

 

a few RX-7's, several supras and two wive's later, I feel your pain! OK, so I'm a slow learner.....

glad it was something simple. I bet you were saving for a motor in the mean time. So what's next on the goody list?????

 

Yeah, the last spark plug change was done at one of the track events I was at earlier this year (May). In the future I will be double-checking them religiously.

Not sure what I will do with the "saved" funds yet. hehehe

l8r)

 

This just happened to me tonight. #3 plug backed it's way out. I was really confused how this was even possible. I did a search here on EvoM and here we are. I wish I would have see this thread sooner... No problems though after I popped a new plug in.

- Robert

 

Crush ring is good for only one crush (no pun). Torque to 25NM and if they still back out the only explanation would be the...

SPARK PLUG GHOST OF ANTIARK