Austin Garner

After completing a spark plug job, my car begin to chirp twice upon start up and would troop intermittently while driving. The car was not doing this previous to my spark plug job, which let me to believe it was the culprit. I ended up going back and checking The spark plugs one by one, and sure enough I found one that was loose. I just wanted to post this just in case anyone else had the same problem and needed help figuring out the noise

Turbonut

iTrader: (1)

Glad you found the culprit before it became loose enough to "fly" out and destroy the threads and coil, but that's one reason to use a torque wrench and that would likely not have happened.

nfnsquared

OP, what torque spec did you use? The SM calls for 13.1 ft-lbs with anti-seize.

If you choose to ignore that, you should use the NGK recommended 18-21.6 ft-lbs with no anti-seize.

sockr1

iTrader: (5)

i've always been curious about this, but what do you think a re-tighten torque should be? I re-tighten my spark plugs every oil change and i always do 13 but wonder if that is too small since i'm sure the anti seize has dried up by now

Austin Garner

Yes I could tell there was something off when I heard that noise.. to the point where I didn't want to drive it after it started making that noise I let the car sit overnight and took a look at it in the morning. It was so easily mistaken for a bad pulley or bearing because that noise is almost similar. after searching google all night I finally found a porshe forum where a guy was talking about how he had chirping , etc. and he found out it was just a loose plug. thanks to this information I was able to find out the issue, but I did the front three and then the back three, after getting the thread started i guess it slipped my mind to tighten cylinder 1's plug all the way. But yes I am very lucky after reading about people who actually had their spark plug eject from the engine and shoot through their ignition coil. that'd be a nightmare. As far as the PSI , I didn't have a torque wrench on hand when I did the job. if I could do it over again, I would have borrowed a friends or rented one. . but I hand tightened it and went for about 3/4 of a turn after that to ensure it'd stay in. For the longest I was trying to find out the right PSI myself but the information on the NGK website contradicts what's in our manual. I think as long as you don't over tighten it to the point where the threads are damaged, it should be fine. Somewhere in between the service manual recommended 13 and the NGK recommended 18-21 will be just fine. My car is running great now after not using a torque wrench so it is possible, Just not ideal. thanks for the replies guys!

Austin Garner

I used no anti seize and tightened by hand!
If you are using anti seize on the plugs, don't tighten past 13 because the anti seize and create problems with removing NGK plugs, they already have a metal coating that prevents it from seizing! always go OE, make sure to use the NGK platinum iridium. and CHECK THE GAPS. it's pathetic how the company claims to pre gap them all to .044 but in reality, I checked every plug and had to adjust the bottom electrode. all of the plugs came out to be less than .044 so he sure to inspect that before the install of new plugs.

nfnsquared

Hmmm, changed plugs twice now (1st @110K miles, 2nd @ 215K miles) and all 12 plugs were properly gapped....

Good question on the retorque figure... I have no clue, especially when it comes to pulling a plug and then replacing it....