Soooo, all humor aside, when I was coming back from the nationals a few weeks ago, on the tail end of the journey, I heard a “gurgling” sound in my left stack. The truck seem to be running absolute perfectly, and there was no change in the performance.
I got to thinking about it, and I probably put about 30,000 miles on this truck by myself, the previous first and only owner did meticulous maintenance, but I’ve never done anything but change the oil. So I was thinking I should probably check everything.
I’ve got other vehicles, so it wasn’t on top of the list, and I drove it a little bit since
@97RangerXLT and
@snoranger guided me through fixing the air conditioner last year. I still heard the gurgling sound, and then it did seem to have a little dip in power. Then, as I walked around the back of the truck, there was a little soot on the left side behind the stack. I looked in the stack and it was jet black charcoal powder. I said to myself “O S***!” Little did I know that feeling and exclamation would follow the process.
I ordered the spark plugs, the wires, etc. to do a basic tuneup online. When everything came in, I went out in the 95° heat and of course I started on that left-hand side. The front spark plug was the easiest to get to. I got the socket that fit the new spark plugs, and I fiddled around and could not get it to catch. So then I climbed under the hood upside down and backwards with a mirror so I could actually see it, and I realized the existing spark plug was smaller in diameter at the nut.
So then I took my deep sockets, and I was going one by one to try to figure out which one was the right size. I was wiggling them around and spinning them at the end of a couple of extensions with a universal, but no luck grabbing hold. Then I heard a “plink!” I looked down, and the spark plug was under the truck.
I’ve been doing this stuff a long, long time on a lot of vehicles. I never put any pressure on that spark plug to loosen it up, it wasn’t even in the whole finger tight. I got upside down and backwards again, and I looked in the hole, and the whole hole was sooty. I said to myself “O S***!”
You guys know a lot more about this than I do, and this may be on a little tangent, but how come no matter what you drop under a vehicle, no matter where it was located, it will always end up exactly in the most difficult place to get it out from under the vehicle? Well, Let’s skip that for now, but I’d like to know.
I did get the plug, and I compared it to the new one.
New plug on the right, the plug that was in the truck in the center, and the closest thing I had in the shed of miracles is on the left, a plug from the Lincoln town car.
From where the plug seats, the town car plug was about an eighth of an inch longer. I am curious if anybody knows if that would’ve been a problem or not, but I didn’t want to risk it. Of course, I went into the shed of miracles, I looked in the spark plug and ignition section, and I looked at everything. It might be hard to believe, but the Mercedes plugs didn’t fit it, the Yamaha motorcycle plugs didn’t fit it, the Chevy plugs didn’t fit it, the Honda motorcycle plugs didn’t fit it, the glow plugs from the F250 and the Mercedes didn’t fit it, etc., I was SOL. I said to myself “O S***!”
In the process, I took a closer look at the plug that came out, after I cleaned it up with a wire wheel. Take a look at this:
I’ve seen a few burned plugs in my day, but I have never seen one burned this far down, I’ve never had a truck run so smooth with such a bad plug, and of course I was still in disbelief that that plug was only in the hole by two or three turns!
Another side note, someday I might be advanced enough in my age to have some common sense, but not yet. Of course I had the truck parked blocking everything else in, so I had to put that rotten plug back in to move the truck. I said to myself “O S***!”
Another side note, I was out of time at the moment, so I drove the truck about 70 miles round-trip to see the cute little brunette. It ran like crap, but she was a treat.
So circling around to what I did to my Ranger today, I got the correct plugs at NAPA, and in the 95° heat, I just pulled that one out and put another one in. BTW, when I put the old one in, I had cleaned out the hole with my special spark plug dirty hole cleanup tool, and it seemed to seat properly.
That’s the stem/dowel from a dollar store Fourth of July flag that I bought probably 20 years ago, a little piece of a striped shirt I wore in the 70s that I still wear to protect my neck when on welding, and a little masking tape. It worked perfectly with a little carb cleaner.
The new plug also seemed to seat perfectly. I was scared to death the hole was stripped, but it seemed to be fine. I cranked it up and revved the engine, and it did seem to sound much better, but I was melting from the heat, so the test drive will be later.
But the glass is half full. I made it all the way to Pennsylvania and back without any worries, and when I got to work on it in the high heat, it was the first plug I looked at. Thank you to the Man upstairs for all of that.
And of course, I can’t use my standard “my two cents” to close. My thinking at this moment is more like “what a dumb S***!”
Be kind…
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, wasn't sketchy though, went fine but I was only going 30 miles... I even got it unloaded without issue...
