If a plug blows when you are miles away from home, is there a way to disable the cylinder and limp home? Mine is a 99 v10 and I've done the insert.

Would you carry a repair kit and search for a garage to assist in a diy or at least supervise an insert?

I would prefer to limp home and do the repair myself as long as I wouldn't make the problem worse.

Would appreciate your thoughts on this.

Thanks
wm

 

Pull the plug on the fuel injector for the cylinder that blew the plug so no fuel gets shot into the cylinder. There will be noise from the piston going up and down obviously but no damage will be caused with the injector unplugged. You can also get a temporary plug to stick into the hole of the blown spark plug to keep the sound down and keep dirt from getting into the cylinder. Still need to unplug injector with that plug of course.

 

My engine is clean so it might be just as well to leave the plug out and suffer the noise for the rest of the trip. I'll pull the plug on the injector. If you put the plug back in wouldn't it blow right back out?

Hope I'm just being too nervous about this, but I know it's a real possibility.

Thanks,
wm

 

This is the "emergency plug".
Emergency Plug Kit
As you can see it is not a spark plug or anything. Just basically a piece of rubber hose with a bolt through it. Kinda like they use on boats and boat livewells.

 

Sorry to hear it ,I feel your pain and hope it will never happen to me.

 

Thanks Dkf, I'll try to get one of these. Have you ever used one?

 

No never used one.

 

After today, I don't think you need one. At $59. each I would have needed two, plus shipping, and then installing them while I was parked on the side of the Intestate two times. Just did my disconnects, picked up the pieces and back on the road. There were cops all over today and I don't need more stress.

Yes, today I blew out two more plugs, luckily not either of the two I already repaired with inserts, but two new, no:7 & 8. I have an idea I will be doing more in the near future.
Thanks to the advice here, disconnecting the coils and carefully disconnecting the injectors worked just fine. I was towing a small tractor, maybe total GW of 6K max, and had no trouble running 60mph for about 100 miles home. I felt that I was low on power prior to blowing the plug, but had no missing or shuddering.

When it first started missing a month ago, I pulled the plugs to check them and most were loose. I put them back in dry, torqued at 20lbs which should have held more than 300 miles, I think they just barely torqued on only a thread or two. Anyway, tomorrow I'll put inserts in these two and be ready for more. Actually at 60 mph the noise was not bad.

Thanks for your wisdom, without knowing what to do would have been really scary.

 

Okay, that's impressive. I read one poster's comments a year or so ago about how smoothly the V10 ran on only 9 cylinders. But eight, and still carrying a load? Nice.

 

Sorry to hear you blew more plugs. Sounds like the threads may have been damaged at some point.

 

Something is fishy ... blowing one plug, fine. Two? Rare. Three or more? Weird. Very weird.

 

Cross-threaded spark plugs maybe? I could see someone cross thread them, then get frustrated and be over zealous with the wrench when tightening because they "just wont go"

 

More like old OLD plugs, like originals, rusty as heck, and removing them took out the aluminum threads.

 

Or doing it with a hot engine block.. I was going to chance it on my 3V 5.4 but I decided to let the dealer deal with it.

 

I can easily see how removing plugs on a hot engine can result in galling and sticking of the aluminum to the plug. It doesn't take much heat to get the aluminum soft and ready to gall. Once they start to gall if you keep going the threads will boogered on the way out. If you cross thread a plug its just plain laziness. Even if your broke you can find a piece of rubber hose to prevent crossthreading.

The galling possibility is why I prefer a nickel plated plug like the MC SP479 over the Autolite AP103 equivelent. I pulled some Autolite AP103 out a 4.0l SOHC (aluminum heads) the other week and there was some rust on the threads and had some resistance the first few turns. Those plugs were in around 50k miles with a dab of antiseize on the threads. All were tight.