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Guess I'm Lucky

5K views 69 replies 22 participants last post by  X-Factor 
#1 ·
Was driving to meet some friends this morning when I leave a red light and once I get into second gear start to roll into the throttle. I'm like 75% throttle when all in a sudden I have power loss and the car starts bucking. Check engine light instantly turns on. I pull over and hop out and notice my car sounds like a subaru. I'm thinking I just blew my motor lol.

I limp the car home 20 miles and let it cool then pull my spark plugs. First three look fine but the I get to cyl 4 and see this

Sorry about the shitty Iphone pics.






At this point I'm Thinking I kissed a piston with a plug some how then I flipped it and.....




ha. Bullet dodged. ceramic or what ever that is broke and slid down blocking spark. I threw in an extra plug I had and went on my way. I swear man Blown motor scare on an evo is right up there with the "Oops I got my girl pregnant" scares.
 
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#3 ·
What you think causes it. Detonation? They are stock plugs. I changed them in at 15k miles just because. Now I have 28k
 
#11 · (Edited)
I'm not stranger to failure. I'm just glad I kept it together mentally and didn't freak out. Took a deep breath, called my boy to get over with my tools I sold him and start trouble shooting. Can't like the time it took to unscrew and pull out the cyl 4 spark plug felt like an eternity. I had flashes of what wisniaPl's motor look like going through my head. Total carnage lol.
 
#12 ·
same thing happened to mine. #2 and #4 both broke like that slipping the liner over the electrode. You are luckier than me. I melted piston #4. I'm still not sure if the plugs failed and caused the chain reaction, or if something else was going on that caused the plugs to fail.

Either way I'm swapping mine out every 15k miles and checking them before every race and after every race now.
 
#15 ·
Tach motor works. 80 a pop ain't cheap but as you can see seems like our cars need them changed often once not 100% stock. but it also could be the 40 degree drop in weather us north east guess faced these last few days. 70 one minute and it was 30 this mroning when it happened to me.
 
#16 ·
Just a heads up, word on the street is a local dealership had a 100% bone stock brand new car have the same failure on one cylinder. At this point we don't have a lot of options other than swapping your OEM plugs often since there aren't many aftermarket plugs available.
 
#22 · (Edited)
i'm thinking this is similar to the melted piston issue, maybe op caught it in time? I know of 1 local guy who had a spark plug failure and I live in Canada. You guys have way more evo owners down there.

Livevil. Here's a thread.

http://www.evoxforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53744

I don't think he's pulled the head off yet to inspect the damage but it definitely sounds of firing on 3 cyl. I heard it first hand.



another...

http://www.evoxforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53698

more plug issues...

http://www.evoxforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38843

not sure if they are all related but still.... thats only 2 minutes searching forums.
 
#23 ·
Very paranoid about this exact issue...so I probably end up spending way too much on plugs. I change them every 10k or after a dyno tuning session...gone through 6 sets with only 30k on the car...lots of extra laying around if anyone wants them (plus keep a couple of extra plugs in the emerg tool kit in the trunk)
 
#24 ·
That happened to one of my plugs on the dyno, made us spend a day investigating b/c we didn't turn the plug upside down lol. Luckily we caught it and no issue, but still, scary.
 
#28 ·
Question guys. With that piece sliping down and covering my plug tip like that whats worse that could happen? Id think the engine walls my wash down and lose compression but with out spark there wouldn't be a way to eat that piston right?
 
#45 · (Edited)
detonation, knock. Justin blew his motor, and a bad spark plug is though to be the reason
Best case is you have a miss fire, you catch it and pull over and don't fuck up your engine. Worst case is your going WOT in 3rd gear and hard break into a banked right, rev match into 2nd and melt a piston.

My car failed with no warning, no SES, no anything. The car ran great, I went into a turn and when I shifted back into 2nd there was a immediate loss of power, followed by oil spraying all over the windshield and my car put out a huge white smoke screen and it was all over.

My car was well tuned, well taken care of, and always serviced by the best guys in the Dallas area. The only thing we could find out of the whole mess was the #2 and #4 plugs were fucked up. This was confirmed by Cobb and EvoD. The real question is did something happen to overheat those two cylinders to cause the spark plugs to fail and start the domino effect, or did the plug liners let go slipping over the electrodes causing a miss fire in #2 & #4 thus causing the over pressure and piston failure. The answer is we will never know. Shit happens. I should have been logging with my AccessPort like I normally do.

Just check everything on a regular basis including compression and log as much as you can and take the time to look at your logs to proactively catch issues before they turn into nightmares.



 
#31 · (Edited)
but you need spark for detonation which I didn't have any spark in that cyl no? It felt like my cyl wall was washed down and the car wouldn't boost past 23 psi for the first pull then. I was like wtf then instantly the next pull it was back to normal and has been since. I'm guessing since I smelled gas in the oil I defiantly washed down cyl 4 wall and the rings resealed after I boosted it a couple times. That's my theory.
 
#30 ·
I am just wondering were all these cars tuned properly?
 
#32 ·
Fuck I should have poured some oil in that cyl to help it out after changing that plug. Hope I didn't damage my cyl walls. That 20 mile drive home might not have been the best decision. Only a leak down test will really show me if I'm fucked or not.
 
#33 · (Edited)
This shit looks scary. Creeps the shit out of me :(


Will get my spark plugs changed this Friday.

Which of those two are the best for our EVO X? (I still untuned btw)



BTW Darksun, what rims are those In your car and what size?
 
#35 ·
Thought they were 19". Looked pretty big. Nice setup by the way :clap:

Any idea on the plugs? HKS or Trust?
 
#36 ·
I use the M45XL's in the summer and OEM in the winters. 0.024 gap.
 
#38 ·
Cool. Thanks for the tip.

No winter though in this country (Malaysia)... Well, more like single season all year long.

:(
 
#41 ·
Was yours tuned?
 
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