Lovely. I've seen a few other people have this problem in the past several months, and now apparently it was my turn. Was in Chicago tonight and after snagging some awesome Giordano's pizza, dropped to 3rd gear on the freeway and blew the plug out. At first I thought it was a gasket as I was trying to pull over, but then I started seeing the flashing CEL and smelled fuel, lol. So then I cringed a bit more, and then I pulled the car out of gear as I came to a stop and it started bouncing from 1k to 2k and at that point my cringe was now a full-fledged "oh shit" look on my face.

80 miles from home, basically. Luckily insurance picked up half of the tow back to Milwaukee so I only ended up 130 bucks out of pocket tonight.

Blew the plug out of cylinder 4 and sheared off the ignition coil entirely - both the plug and the coil shot out underneath the car, never to be seen again. OEM plugs, and to my knowledge they've never been pulled (at least since I owned the car which has been about 35k miles now).

Good news is Gerzand pulled through and just so happens his old j32 race heads showed up at my door a week ago and I've just been waiting on cam regrinds, so I'll be replacing the heads anyway on my journey to 13.5:1 compression ....speaking of a build that I'll be VERY closely monitoring spark plug tightness on....

 

IIRC, most of the other cases have been #5. Interesting.... Most of the other cases experienced loud "ticking" before the incident. Did you notice anything like that?

 

Oh no...

 

Happened to me last week, it was cyl #2. I heard a loud ticking when I started my car right after I came out of home depot (I didn't hear anything unusual on the way there.) The Honda dealer was across the street thankfully so I limped the TL over there. I was pretty sure I knew what had happened and told my tech friend who was working. Sure enough,The plug backed out of cyl #2 and stripped the threads and toasted the coilpack. Anyways, that was the extent of the damage, but I changed all my plugs right after it was fixed. im @ 106k now and just had the timing belt done at 103k. I planned on changing the plugs on my own time since its easy and would have saved me some money, but I got busy with work and didn't get around to it, and this is what happened. So anyone who might be approaching that 100k mark (or even earlier) it doesn't hurt to check, it could save you some $$. That's my advice.

 

^^^^ #2??? On the back row facing the firewall?

 

Yes! its was a PITA to work on.

 

what is the real cause this to happen? does anyone know the exact answer?

 

Interesting - I hadn't noticed any noises I thought were abnormal. Maybe a bit of valve chatter but that's it. 83k miles on my car.

Ironically I was planning on changing out all the plugs and doing the 105k maintenance a bit early in the next couple weeks anyway, given that the heads and cams will be off the car.

I have seen no rhyme or reason for this to happen. Any time I have seen people post on Acurazine with a similar experience, it seems they are on first set of OEM plugs and no obvious signs of tampering.

edit: i drove my old '05 TL wayyyy harder than I drive my type-s, and never had a problem. Like I flogged that thing bad. I did the 105k maintenance myself on the '05 at about 108k miles and everything was as it should be, albeit worn plugs which I replaced and again never had problems and eventually sold the car.

 

too much vtec




I'm checking my plugs today.

 

Just had #5 happen to me 2 weeks ago. Was a PITA to deal with but did the helicoil and replaced all plugs and the #5 coilpack.

Such a simple problem that has been overlooked by Honda on this issue. There should be a recall for something like, especially how simple of a fix it is before everything blows apart.

 

Yeah, I dunno. Never had a problem with the OEM plugs on my '04. Replaced them at 106K with NGK's again, followed SM spec/procedure and no issues for 26K so far.

Apparently it's not just in TLs, but an issue with the J32. Some folks are saying the J32 has some kind of harmonic vibration issue that's causing the plugs to back out...

 

I read a few Honda forums to maybe shed some light on this after it happened to me. Its been known to happen on pilots and odysseys too (j35). Doesn't sound like a common issue, but it can happen.

 

checked my front plugs yesterday.
they were all tight.

 

Had the code P0300 along with #2 & #4 code last night. Thinking I'd try a can of fuel system cleaner and put a few miles on it to see if it would clear up.

Blew out #4 plug.

 

There was a TSB about the Type-S and a way to fix it without breaking the bank.

I'm not sure what is causing the plugs to back out but I'm starting to see a trend on this too. I guess the best method to avoid this is to check the plugs every other oil change to make sure they haven't backed out!

 

I wasn't able to tighten a new plug into the hole so it's going to take more work. It must have blown taking some threads with it. The plug just wouldn't catch any threads

 

That sucks. If it's not from under torquing them, detonation can do this as well. I wonder if that cylinder tends to run leaner than the rest.

 

It's interesting that it doesn't seem to be an issue (or at least not heavily documented) in the 04-06 cars. I checked my plugs for tightness ~ 2 years ago when I replaced the O2 sensors and none of them had any give to be tightened.

 

OK, the dealership will offer advice that the 1 misfiring cylinder can cause codes to be thrown for more than one cylinder. That answers one question I ahd as to why #4 and #2 were showing misfire codes.

The Acura dealership will remove the heads (prefer to remove both if you're going to remove one). Then send them out to a shop to have the heli-coil insert installed. Estimated cost: $3,500.00.

 

^I am pretty sure I have read about that procedure being done for a LOT less than that! I could be wrong, but maybe worth a second opinion.


I would think a used engine would be cheaper than that quote.