spark plug mystery

[tirebird]

My engine must be in the twilight zone. Yesterday, I was starting to adjust the valves on the LS6 when I discovered something I've never encountered before. You know the old rule, do something long enough and you'll see something you've never seen before. This falls into that category. Before pulling off the passenger side valve cover, I decided to disconnect the spark plug wires from the passenger side at the distributor. I did, and when I carefully pulled the wires aside, one of the spark plug wires(#4) also fell off it's spark plug. But wait, it gets better. The boot inside the wire had the screw-on sparkplug tip. That means the tip unscrewed from the spark plug while attached to the spark plug wire! How does that happen? The spark plug doesn't rotate and neither does the wire boot. So, the tip had to rotate while attached to the boot. The spark plugs are about a year old(3k miles) and no, I didn't notice any engine misses while driving so I think the boot(Taylor SpiroPro) was still attached to the spark plug insulator. I can't explain it.

[StriperSS]

Your car is haunted.

[njsteve]

Ever been to Roswell, New Mexico????

[markjohnson]

Yes, that is strange. Taylor SpiroPro's are a high quality wire and I use them on almost everything. Surprising to hear that.

[olredalert]

-------Possibly the spark-plug tip was not screwed on well in the first place???.......Bill S

[tirebird]

Yeah, I thought of that too. But, I remember carefully checking the plugs when I installed them to make sure the tip was screwed on tight. After correcting the problem yesterday, I pulled off the boots on the other 7 plugs and a couple were slightly loose, but not like #4. As I wrote before, it's a mystery.

[Xplantdad]

I would assume that the screw in spark plug tip did rotate inside the boot...as I'm sure that the boot isn't excessively tight on the spark plug wire...otherwise it would be impossible to get off?

[3macs1]

I have seen this happen on snowblower motors due to the constant vibrations but not on a automobile.

[tirebird]

Well, we all know how those LS6's can vibrate.