Boom at top of third
Now when i pushed the car getting onto the freeway, at the top of third gear the slight ticking became a loud BANG! and its made an unusually loud ticking noise ever since, and the SES light started blinking. I drove the car strait home after puling over and diagnosing to the best of my knowlage that the header gasket had blown.
Now this morning, I was getting ready to replace the gaskets, and when i was under the car, I noticed that the passenger side plug closest to the tranny (#7 I think) was hanging loose from the plug wire touching my header! Did the loud BANG! blow out the sparkplug? Did the shop mess up and disconnect the sparkplug and forget to put it back? Wouldn't this flood the #7 cylinder with fuel? Would the car have run on 7 cylinders for 280 miles???
Any help and opinions are greatly appreciated, as I dont even want to touch my car at this point.
Chris
Last edited by hpjunky98; Nov 19, 2007 at 12:05 AM.
Did the car seem slower or sluggish? If it didnt, then I doubt the plug/wire was not plugged back in. Now if it did, then they may have forgot. But the tick sounds like a header leak and a blown gasket.
Just get a new plug and reinstall it. Just hope you didn't mess up the threads.
The louder ticking noise you heard was all the air coming out of #7.
I am not sure why the spark plugs lossen up, but some times they do. I have heard of it happen several times on our cars.
The SEL light flashing means it had a misfire. It will go away once your plug is back in.
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If anyone has rethreaded a sparkplug hole please chime in and let me know your experience.
If you have the cash and time take the head off and have a machine shop do this to avoid shavings and stuff in the motor. If you are strapped for cash and its your daily... Helicoil on the car.
The helicoil kit will come with the threaded insert and a tap for the insert.
1. apply a liberal ammount of grease into the threads of the tap to catch shavings
2. clean out all grease and shavings from tapping to a larger size, clean the tap and run it back through atleast 4 times, cleaning after each try with a good solvent such as brake cleaner or contact cleaner, the threads MUST be absolutely 100% clean, no oil or any kind of residue.
3. apply loctite brand bearing retaining compound on the insert, not loctite red or blue, you need some real ****. Loctite #620 or #668 high temp retaining compound would be prefered.
4. Make abolutely sure you don't thread the insert in too far as exposed threads in the combustion chamber are asking for hot spots and detonation.
5. There's a little tang used to thread the insert in, this must be broken off with absolute care to not get it into the motor.
Really, honestly, don't want to sound like a dick but being that there are so many unknowns you should pull the head and take it to a machine shop.
I don't wanna **** this up though, so I guess thats what im gonna have to do. This means I have to pull the intake and all off too.
Damn it! Ive never had to dip into the motor before, and I dont have the cash to upgrade at the same time... unless i sell my wheels or something.





