Ritzy4Runner

iTrader: (1)

Well it happened yesterday, my daughter seems to have taken care of the issue I had with the #4 spark plug being "stuck". Murphy is alive and well. It happened while she was in Eastern Washington seeing clients for her coffee business, 4 hours from either her house or mine. Seems she was driving along on the highway and heard what sounded like a loud "POP" and the slapping sound of what she thought was a belt that had come loose as well as the truck started running like crap!

So she had no idea what had really happened so she called me. I was at work on 2nd shift (remember Murphy's Law) working on repairing a boorken piece of test equipment. Not totally sure as to what extent the problem was going to be but I started to assume the worst case scenario. I told her to call her sister who only lived about 9 miles from where she was broke down and to have the 4runner towed to their house, I would make arrangements to leave work as soon as I could and would then pick up a tow dolly and tow the truck home behind my 4runner.

Well as fortune would have it, her brother-in-law is rather mechnically inclined and investigated the issue when they arrived to assist. He reached in to check the suspected plug and it just came right out. They had the truck towed to a local garage and they asissted in the onsite repair. Seems the plug that had been stuck during checking the gaps on had finally worked loose and it seems fortunate right now that the threads in the head and the plug appear to be intact. The plug screwed right into place without wobble and torqued into the head. This was performed at a local garage who after examination quoted her a really low price to help her out and the guy was really helpful and helped to put her mind at ease about the issue.

Bottom line here was the plug was reinstalled and when the truck was started it fired right up and sounded great. She called me to tell me not to wrry about driving out to get her. I will not get her to bring me her truck and we will replace all the plugs and use anti-seize as was recommended by several here and replace the throttle body while I have it.

For those who have had a plug blow out, what should I look for to ensure that there is no other damage to the head or threads? anyone had one work loose and just 'pop' out with no damage? the upside to this is my daughter is getting a crash course in learning about her truck!

UKMyers

If it screwed back in and tighened up I would not worry about it. I'd replace it soon like you said because when it was about to fall out it was a long ways from the combustion chamber and was probably not really burning the gas real well in the cylinder. I imagine it's probably pretty junked up. Sounds like you got lucky on that one.

thook

Amazing. Yeah, I wouldn't worry about, either, and replace the plugs. Might run some Seafoam or equivalent through the fuel system to burn off any carbon build up.

So, is it running good now? You said it sounded great. Maybe the TB replacement isn't necessary?

Ritzy4Runner

iTrader: (1)

Just talked to my daughter in eastern Washington to check on her. She said it was running better then before and then while we were talking ... she stopped and it stalled!

ACtually she started to laugh a bit and said "totally wierd Dad", only about 15 minutes ago, so yeah going to get her to bring it over and leave it with me so I can change the plugs (cold-LOL), and do a TBA swap to see if that helps. Its not totally fixed but I hope it soon will be. Gotta find the OEM plugs and some anti-seize, looks like it may be an interesting weekend, and my youngest son graduates fron HS on Friday!