Well new to the boards but not new to the scene.... backstory: was on my 2070 mile journey from Las Vegas, Nevada to Athens Georgia and about 2010 miles in i blew a spark plug out of my engine... white smoke, bang, i thought someone threw a flashbang at my car while driving lol... car sputtered out, no give no go pulled over... lifted hood, saw dangling sparkplug wire and didnt know what to do. i called my buddy darin and asked for help... sparkplug destroyed, wire had the top portion stuck in it, so darin suggested to unplug my fuel injector. with no fuel dumpin in he said i would be able to drive it, but it would be sound like a harley on full throttle LOL, he wasnt kidding... i got my car off the highway and ended up in the toysRus parking lot in buckhead i belive near piedmont st... all i knew was i needed a new sparkplug.. so i jumped on my phone looked for a autozone/pepboys... closet one was 3 miles away and 5 miles away, so i called up pepboys to ask if they had ngks in and they said yes, so i got on my googlemaps and started walking.. after the long journey in an unknown city finnaly got there... too bad it was 5 mins past closing time and they wouldnt sell me sparkplug... damn just my luck again, being sadden by the situation i walked back to my car. on the way i passed what i thought was a white castle and got my grub on.. wow krystals huh funny... got my double burgers and a shake... got my 3 miles walk back on to my car and slept in the cold cold atl night... next morning got my walk on again back to pepboys and bought the plug and got my wire fixed... got back to my car and started to screw it in.. i was tightening and tighting but it never locked down, threads were stripped.. noooo good.... so i just thought hard, then said to my friend darin, i need to get out of here my wife was waiting for me and being in ATL damn expensive to stay the night especially in buckhead... so i drove off the rest of my trip to athens georgia with 3 cylinders firing... hahaha loudest journey of my life... but i made it... 1 month later im still here. i did a hell of alot of research to see what could be done... helicoil seemed like the best solution... but i had no place to pull apart my heads, so i wanted to do the grease up method and keep everything on.... i bought a spark plug repair kit but the tap does not fit into the clyinder. then i found a regular thread repair kit with a skinny tap but that tap has a square end so i cant hook it up to a socket wrench, and the tool that comes with it actually doesnt work with this tap. i looked for a square socket adapter from homedepot, harbor frient, and sears.. no go... this is where i am now, i still drive the car with 3 cylinders but only when i need to get to somewhere very imporatant... so now im out of ideas on what to do... has anyone delt with something like this or know what i should really be buying? the car is old and was just my DD, i dont wanna spend more on fixing this when i could just buy a new one but what can i do... any help would be appreciated... should i sink my teeth in a find a shop to do it, not sure how much they would charge.... or suggestions guys... thanks in advance... anyone here in athens? or near by lol?
My brother's car had a similar issue. The dealership ended up putting a helicoil in IIRC. And it was indeed quite loud
so you've been driving on 3 cylinders and the forth open with no plug? I'd plan on replacing the timing belt, water pump, headgaskets and refresh the heads. If it's a coupe I'll give $500.00 for it
well the engine is pretty old and is seccond hand, did a swap with my friend back in vegas about a year ago for his old one... we did 2 swaps that week, he was putting in a ej20 and i was replacing my old engine cuz my crank key ripped off lots of damage so i got his old engine and we replaced his... so the engine has about maybe 200K now on it with 2 cars... lol... and this car is a sedan 4 door lx...
its a ej22 from a 1996 subaru impreza l wagon. its been very good to me and the previous owner. well the only thing wrong is that cylinder really. the spark blew out and ripped the threads.. other than that it was driving beautifully all the way up to atlanta i had no issues only thing was my ac but thats seperate lol...