OK, well I thought I was somewhat knowledgeable of cars... Yeah about that haha. To start things off, I bought Pulse Plugs, got them in the mail was siked to get them in and see if they made any difference what so ever, especially with my gas mileage seeing as I'm about to make a 1500 mile trip back to NY for leave (in the military). So I kinda knew how to install spark plugs but just to make sure I drove over to a friends house to have him install them because he knows more about cars then I do. I thought Id watch him and make sure I knew what was going on. Well I did, blah blah blah got them installed drove home. He said it was normal for my car to idle funny and not be as responsive because the engine was getting used to the new plugs or w.e ( not sure if thats true ). Well we didn't gap them becasue we werent sure about the right gap size for my car and it wasn't in the owners manual so I figured id drive home jump on the trusty old internet and find out. Now the plugs were gapped by default to .040 which I found out is where they needed to be. Well when I got home I wanted to make sure they were at .040 because he also told me if it was gapped wrong it would make my car drive funny. SO I pulled out the spark plugs and well they were at .040 BUT!! ohh man... one of my spark plugs looked like this...



THe peice that is missing WAS sitting right here



I grabbed a pair of needle nose pliers, and tried to carefully remove the broken piece but it fell into the hole... Now what I need to know is, what do I have to do to get that piece out? I took off what I thought was the valve cover, took me forever by the way, and well it only got me halfway there as in half of the spark plug hole, thing, what ever it's called( don't worry I'm about to do a lot of research on what things in an engine are called) was off .... I don't know what to do to fix this...

 

Get yourself a vacuum cleaner and some small plastic tubing. Use duct tape to mate the tubing to the vacuum cleaner inlet. Then stick the tubing down the hole and pray like hell that you either suck the piece through the tube or at least grab hold enough to bring it out.

Otherwise, you're looking at removing the head to get it out.

 

werd

 

Ok say I can't vacuum it out, how hard is it to remove the head?

 

ya...pretty much like we talked about over the phone...i like the duct tape idea though...def worth a try!!!! that and a pair of loooooong tweaser things may work...but ya...

 

I tried the long tweezers, couldn't really feel around too much with them. Plus I was looking in past that hole with a flashlight, it kinda looks like when is started my car, the ceramic piece that broke off got ground up into littttttttle pieces, the only reason I think this is because I saw white specs in the one hole, and the other 3 holes were clean

 

so, who installed them exactly? you, or your friend? because if it was his fault, personally I'd make him help remove the head............. er.... screatch that, have him pay you to get the head removed.....

 

lawls

 

Haha I'm pretty sure it was him that broke it, because if it was me the piece would have been still in my spark plug socket when I pulled it out. It doesn't help that these damn spark plugs are 25$ a piece.

 

hmmm...it may have just been pulvurized and you are good (ish) but i would not take the risk...
if it were me...the head would come off at this point either way...
getting a small gritty piece of that stuck next to your cylinder when on would be just like sand in your cylinder...would etch into the wall of the cylinder like CRAZY

 

Yeah, Im not gonna worry about it too much, but tomorrow m going to have him come over and spend some time checking this out haha.

 

ya...

 

I was looking around on the internet but can't find a picture, anyone have a picture or know where I can find a picture of what I have to take off to get where I need to be?

 

It sounds like you're in over your head. If I read correctly, you've started and run the engine since dropping a chunk of porcelain into the cylinder. If you have, then any damage has already been done. Either forget about it and keep driving the car, or have a professional remove the head. If you and your buddy can't manage to change spark plugs without ruining something, I definitely don't trust that you can remove and install a cylinder head without causing serious engine damage.

 

i dont think this is an error installing the plugs. Himself, myself and another guy on here have all run these plugs and we are starting to think that they are unable to work with our cars and that the capacitor gets overloaded somehow...
i talked with him on the phone and it was an innocent mistake....
although i agree on having a pro do it...always better and safer...

 

hows the cars performance running on 3 cylinders?

haha

 

You friend knows very little about cars...I wouldn't let him refill the washer fluid....

 

acutally this happened to me and i ran on 3 for a while before i really got out to check...i thought it was the car adjusting at first....and once you get up to freeway speed it runs and accelerates fine lol great milage too!!!

 

haha I would imagine..whats that car make that has that feature where it will only run on like 3 cylinders to preserve fuel? Isn;t it jeep or something/?

 

mazada, one of their suv's.

 

did you have a check engine light? just curious, im pretty sure i have a bad spark plug and I haven't had any time to check it becuase im litterally doing nothing but sleeping and working. im getting a funny burnt rubber smell from my engine and it seems like its right in the #4 cylinder area. performance wise im fine, I raped my brothers 350z auto the other day lol.. (mostly becuase he doesn't know how to launch and auto and has slow reaction time, but still i was happy)

 

well I guess if we want that feature on our car we can just have this guys friend put our plugs in for us lol

just kidding, **** happens

 

Yeah seriously, I had an Idea last night though on how to get that piece out. What if I just pulled the spark plug out and tried turning it over so the pistons would kinda blow everything out the hole? I was talking to my dad about that and he said it wouldn't harm the engine.

 

Your valves would be opening and closing at the same time. You'll most likely jam one of them open as opposed to shooting it out the plug hole.

 

Well it sounded like a good idea haha