Broken Accord, please check my plan...

Hi all,

As I write this, I'm sitting in my dead 2007 Honda Accord V6 outside a closed Honda dealer in St. Peters, Missouri, which is about three and a half hours from home. (Ride is on the way)

Earlier today, the car decided it no longer liked its #5 spark plug and so decided to eject it at highway speed, which was somewhat exciting. The coil broke off at the plug, the plug itself is obviously no longer with us, the impact of the exit cracked the plastic engine cover, and the no-longer-connected coil/plug took out a fan blade, although the rad seems OK right now.

Now that I've had a lot of tow-truck-wait time to research this, it seems like it is a known issue that starts with the #5 plug slowly loosening itself, which it advertises via a ticking sound that I assumed was the timing belt telling me that it was time for a replacement. Oops.

I assume that if I let the Honda dealer that is 100 feet to my right look at this, they will tell me that I either need a new head or a new head and block, because of 1) the threads being shot and 2) the potential for spark plug bits and/or threads in the cylinder. It may be obvious from my presence here that I have no plans for either of these tasks to be done at a dealer rate. 

I've read that if a boroscope check on the cylinder (after appropriate prayers) shows no damage or bits, then this can be remedied with a timesert and new plugs all around (plus the coil ans wire and rad fan). And if there is something in the cylinder, then it's a junkyard engine. Either way, I'm not seeing the point of having the dealer look at it.

I would appreciate any and all thoughts you have - please ask questions and poke holes. I appreciate your help!

Can you get to the connector for the fuel injector for that cylinder?  If so, I'd unplug it (so as not be dumping raw gas into your engine/cats etc) and drive home on 5 cylinders.  If there's debris in the cylinder the engine is already scrap, and if there's not debris in that cylinder I can't see any harm in driving it assuming that you're not dumping raw fuel into the cylinder and not driving through a sandstorm or something where a bunch of crap is going to get sucked in through the sparkplug hole. 

I drove a 4 cyl  Accord with a dead (no compression) cylinder 250+ miles at highway speed with the dead cylinder's injector unplugged. 

I'd wait for some others to chime in , in case my plan is crackpipe, but it worked for me. 

In reply to flat4_5spd :

Thanks for taking a look. That is an interesting idea. I'd definitely appreciate others' thoughts on that idea.

  I think any junk already left, out the plug hole or the exhaust port.  Worst case a small piece of junk got caught on the cylinder, and the ring / piston used that piece to wear the cylinder wall.  You could use a bore scope, I found a cheap one on ebay, has been handy, but not sure how good a inspection you could really do.

   Put a lot of grease on the tap used to cut the threads for the helicoil or similar repair.  remove and clean the junk off the tap several times during the thread cutting.  Mcmaster carr will have many thread repair options.   or I am sure there are specific plug thread repair kits.

    Paying to have the repair done with the correct process, would cost huge.  Remove head, replace or repair head off the car, lots of labor time.

    Do the repair, the cheapest, easiest method, and the car might be saved and used for a long time.  Just be careful, grease on the tap, then spin it over without a plug.  If careful you won't make it worse than it is now.

When you cut the threads for the new plug, fill the cylinder with shaving cream, then use a shop vacuum after to suck everything out in case metal shavings drop. Thanks Tom

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/tech-tips/scrape-gaskets-with-shaving-cream/118822/page1/

flat4_5spd said:

Can you get to the connector for the fuel injector for that cylinder?  If so, I'd unplug it (so as not be dumping raw gas into your engine/cats etc) and drive home on 5 cylinders.  If there's debris in the cylinder the engine is already scrap, and if there's not debris in that cylinder I can't see any harm in driving it assuming that you're not dumping raw fuel into the cylinder and not driving through a sandstorm or something where a bunch of crap is going to get sucked in through the sparkplug hole. 

I drove a 4 cyl  Accord with a dead (no compression) cylinder 250+ miles at highway speed with the dead cylinder's injector unplugged. 

I'd wait for some others to chime in , in case my plan is crackpipe, but it worked for me. 

This^. I have done the disconnect and drive with a Honda pilot v6 minus the center cylinder in the rear bank. The engine got swapped out due to damage to piston and walls, but not an hour and a half away from the shop. I still have and drive a Mini Cooper that spit out a plug. I used a shop vac necked down to the biggest fuel line that would fit through the insert to remove metal from the cylinder after the repair. The grease on the tap may have helped some but there was still a bit of aluminum inside to suck out. 

In reply to Sunflowerbw :

Well, truck and trailer are booked. If anyone has any great first-time trailer tips, I'm all ears! I'm starting with, "Remember that you are an extra 14 feet long", and, "Avoid sharp turns"

Don't even try to back up.

Good luck!

In reply to Sunflowerbw :

Pay attention to tire pressures. Do a walk around and look at all the critical points at every stop: tires, hitch, safety chains, tie downs, lights.
 

The ratchet straps will need to be tightened at the first stop. 

Keep an eye on engine temperature, and if you're not running on level ground, back off your speed when climbing or shift down and hold a gear prevent the transmission from overheating due to constant shifting.

Use engine braking when descending hills, and try not to overheat the brakes. Leave plenty of room for stopping. 
 

Oh, and don't forget the ramps before you start to back off the trailer. 

In reply to Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) :

Thank you for all of this! I ended up getting a 2024 Ram 2500 diesel as a tow pig, and it did a great job. 

That forgetting the ramps thing would not be a lot of fun

In reply to BoulderG :

In retrospect, you were correct. Ended up driving it on and off, which was infinitely more possible for me.

In reply to Sunflowerbw :

Instructions thread for my future reference - I think this person may actually be a GRMer as well. Link

In reply to Sunflowerbw :

Scope arriving Thursday. Went with a Depstech dual lens that people seem to like. Fingers crossed for what the inspection will yield...

This exact thing happened to my Accord v6.  I made the mistake of continuing to drive home after it happened.  Shards of spark plug scored my cylinder walls, although the engine ran ok for another 30k miles after my repair.  
 

I bought a timesert kit rather than helicoiling it.  I set the cylinder so the intake valve was open and then hooked a leaf blower up to the intake and ran the blower while I tapped the the spark plug hole.   That actually worked great.  I slathered the tap in lithium grease as well.  Good luck!  It's not a super fun job but lots easier than removing the head first.

In reply to Number1Gaza :

Is https://www.v6performance.net/threads/5-cylinder-spark-plug-blowout.253212/ your thread? Either way, thanks for chiming in! How long did you drive after the blowout? And what happened after the 30K?

Got some photos and video of the inside of the cylinder. I would definitely appreciate your eyes and thoughts on these. I see something that looks like pitting towards the end of the second video (and in the first picture below), but I'm not sure if it is actually pitting and if so, if it matters. 

Straight on

Side view

Fix it, helicoil, or my preference, timesert.
 

Drive it. Move on with your life. 

Looks like bits of carbon to me, not pitting. 

Looks perfectly fine in there.  Do the thread repair and send it. 

#sendit

Number1Gaza said:

I set the cylinder so the intake valve was open and then hooked a leaf blower up to the intake and ran the blower while I tapped the the spark plug hole.   That actually worked great.

Brilliant!

Nothing to worry about in there from the pics above, I think once you're done you won't even know it happened.

My experience was an ej22 spitting out a loose plug about an hour from home. In hindsight when it was repaired I also realized what I thought was an exhaust leak (still had some of those too lol) was actually the loose plug so don't feel bad about missing it. I was able to pull the fuel injector harness and drive home. Luckily for me there was still a good engine machine shop in town and they happened to be right around the corner from the jobsite I was on. They did the repair in car and sold me a new spark plug, I was back on the road in the old Legacy for about $80 a couple hours after dropping it off. 

I do wonder if that plug did any damage to anyone else on the highway, when it popped it hit the ground, bounced up and hit the underside of the car and then went on its way. Hopefully no one lost a windshield because of me. If someone got smacked by a spark plug on the 401 on the west end of Toronto about 15 years ago, sorry!

All right, timersert kit, coil, and plugs ordered. The next question is, do we want to do shaving cream or leaf blower? Please cast your votes!

In reply to Sunflowerbw :

Shaving cream is passive, the leaf blower is active.  I'd go with the blower because of that.

So, I'm back and I have all of my tools and parts. Hooked up the leaf blower and realized that the air is blocked by the (closed) throttle body. Which is not discussed in the instructions. So I'm thinking that I need to remove the throttle body. Unless I'm not thinking about this correctly and missing something here?