A few weeks ago I was on the interstate going 65mph. Clear day, had the windows rolled down and jammin' to Run Like Hell.

Then all of a sudden I hear a pop and the engine is shaking bad and I begin to slow down. I begin to sweat. I first look through the right door mirror, no smoke. Next the rear view mirror, no smoke nor an oil streak. Next I look at the gauges, everything's normal. I then check my pulse, I'm still alive.

I pull her to the side. She's still running but shaking bad. I stop the motor and pop the hood. Everything looks normal. No smoke or burning oil smell. The engine oil looks normal.

I'm 20 miles outside of town. I limp her back to town at 45 miles per hour. I pull into my driveway and begin to say goodbye to my 3.0. I then start thinking about all those Yotatech threads about how much a 3.0 costs and doing a 302 swap.

I didn't want to get ahead of myself. I had a problem to solve, my current 3.0.

First thing I do is check the oil again. Then test the dist. cap, wires and igniter. Next the fuel pressure. They're all fine. Next I decide to pull the plugs and to see if there's oil build up or any sign of coolant. BINGO!

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The Number One sparkplug has exploded. I have never seen or heard of this before. I was just grateful it didn't completely fall apart and damage my valves or combustion chamber. After looking through the maintenance records its been 17,000 miles since I changed them.

After this I did a tune up and my 3.0 is purring again.

 

Thats pretty incredible , I have never seen that either , its amazing you didn't damage anything

 

yeah, at first i was thinking something about those "death wobbles" some ppl have, but dang, thats crazy...

good to hear its back to new

what kind of plug is that?

 

looks like an NGK.. ive never heard of that either. your very lucky

 

how often should plugs be changed? Its been about 40,000 miles since mine were changed and my gas mileage has been great and everything so i havent messed with anything

 

I had a spark plug do that in my old Datsun. It was a defective sparkplug, but I had installed it anyway when it was new after noticing that the ceramic part seemed a little loose and was able to be turned inside the metal collar. It totalled my engine. I ended up having to get another used engine and it was good again. Lucky that your rig is okay.

 

damn I was gonna guess motor mount.

Strange, I've never heard of an NGK doing that....maybe it was from piston slap?

 

For what it's worth, I had the same thing happen to my 4runner (3.0 as well) I was just cruising down the highway and all of a sudden the truck was shaking and the engine was running like crap. When I pulled into the shoulder I could tell the engine was misfiring so I pulled the plugs. Sure enough a piece of the ceramic insulation was missing from the finger.

The plugs were Autolites and I called the company about it. They said that happens from time to time and that the missing ceramic piece probably shattered into a million pieces and left the engine through the exhaust without causing any harm. I still don't believe the part about not causing any harm but this was about 30k ago and I haven't had any problems since. They offered to send me a set of replacement plugs - I just laughed and said no thanks.

I'm not saying Autolites are bad plugs, just that this happened to me as well. I really am not looking to get into the argument about which plugs are best.

 

Well there is some truth to that but there is a chance if it was caught in a exhaust valve or just the right place laying on the piston it could do valve damage , I would consider myself Blessed if that happened with no problems

 

You might want to check and see if your catalytic convert is still good, since you were pushing all that unspent fuel into your exhaust.

I had a coil pack blow on my vdub which caused the same reaction, which it also burned out my cat, and blew a motor mount. But i had a recall i didnt know about and i got almost all of it covered by vw.

 

Did it smoke when you blew that Motor Mount hehe

 

i bet that was a relief when she ran good again.

 

It was an absolute relief when she started up with no problems after the tune up.

BTW it was an NGK spark plug. Been using them since 30,000 miles. Put in a new set of them too. Maybe I should send a thank you letter to them since the their spark plug, even though it failed, didn't harm my engine.

I'm still cracking up about the
3.NoGo

 

Cool yeah you should send it back with a letter describing what happened , maybe they will send you a free change of plugs or a Hat or something

 

That really sucks. especially when you think about the piece left behind.