Spark plugs

[Burnout21]

Oh dear, honestly it was going just too well!

This morning i set about swapping out my spark plugs, its been a while since they were done, think about 60K miles ago when my dad was using it.

1st, 2nd and 3rd plugs were all a tad difficult to remove, but they finally gave up the fight and all of them had no copper grease to be seen on them, much to my shock.

Now i am stuck on the 4th plug, and now on my second 14mm spark plug tool, the first steared on me whilst trying to remove the 4th, cheap halfords crap i guess is at fault.

This plug is truely suck, i've tried hot engine, cold engine, WD40, tighting and untighting back and fourth, but it refuses to move in any direction of rotation.

I was kinda happy when the tool sheared, as it wasn't the plug snapping, phew! I wasn't putting that much force on the tool either.

Now i have given up for a bit as my hands are hurting like a right cu*t!

Usually if this was anyother component i would have slapped a extension bar on it, an given the bar a sharp tap with a hammer, but one i dont have a socket that will fit the plug and two i've not got an extension bar long enough.

Considering the car still runs, i am ok for now, but the plugs anode (the pin) is heavily worn (blasted) away on all three replaced so far, and there has been a noticable power increase and smoothness whilst driving the car with 3 new and 1 old.

So any idea's, or anyone in nottingham/derby willing to help?

[pete-d]

Not sure I can help as I've not encountered this problem yet but others who have more experience than me might find it useful to know what engine you have in it.

I'm interested because I have a 460 turbo and will be doing a full service with plug change shortly.

Cheers

Pete

[B20F]

Try soaking the plug in a special rustdissolving oil or even better Liquid Wrench, WD40 sucks for this kind of jobs. Let it soak for at least 24hours and try again with a good and solid tool.
WD40 stands for Water Displacement 40th solution that they tried and that worked best. It is specially meant to remove water from ignition parts such as leads and dis.caps. So not for dissolving rust. I only use it to remove glue and tar spots from the body, for that it works great, for the rest it's crap.
When you mount the new plugs use some coppergrease on the threads and don't over tighten them, 25nm it should be and that is not very much.

[cryz2]

try plus gas penetrating oil 100% better than wd40

[Burnout21]

On the WD40 can it dose state that it can be used to free stuck parts.

After reading around on the net, i took another trip to halfords today, 3rd time a charm, and picked up a can of 'shock and unlock'.

Basically its a penerating oil with a coolant chemical, so you spray it on and the rapid cooling effect shrinks the part free of the other. So far its not worked, joke is it was the only stuff they had other than WD40, i am going to go spray the car again leave it to soak, and just keep trying on a regular bases.

for the infomation its a 1800 injection 8v beast, lol!

Since wednesday i have been hitting the head with a degreaser because there was alot of crap build up, and i didn't want it going into the cylinder during a change, but this was only on 1 and 2 cylinders, never went near the 4th.

Oh just to note, when i bought the sparks i grabbed a tube of copper grease, to prime the new plugs. what shocked me is that the mechanic that serviced the old plugs didn't use any anti-seeze grease! hence me now having a hard time. Thank f*ck its not an aluminium head on this!

Must admit, the troubles this 4th is giving me i am starting to think maybe the mechanic cross threaded the f**ker. Oh the head aches! If i cant shift it i will take it back the volvo specalist i know and see if he can shift it.

Question, how is the penerating oil ment to soak down the thread when there design to stop the cylinder loosing compression? I think the an NPT thread, so basically leak free.

[veegard]

I had severe problems getting my plugs off aswell, and fourth one was the worst one. Basically we wound up breaking all the plugs as they were on their way up, and just carefully getting both pieces out after we were done.
A tip of a spark plug landed in my right cylinder once though.. Went straight to a utility store and bought a telescope magnet, got it right back out again!

Anyway, we used professional equipment for working on trailers, had to use two people's force to wiggle it up and down, and it didn't really get all loose before it was all the way off..
Threads were fine, it just sat really tight.. Probably previous owner hadn't changed it either, looks like he just gave up.