Spark plug and sleeve came out together, 4.7 cylinder 4

Gents,

Posting this here as I get more love...

I was checking plugs in my new-to-me '07 Sequoia and the sleeve came out along with the #4 spark plug. It was Sunday, and the truck was not in a place where I could leave it. I got the plug/sleeve back in place. She started up and ran fine (accepting the CELs I'm working on), and I moved her to her usual parking spot.

As you can see in the pic, it's a sleeve and not a heli-coil.

How is the sleeve held in place?

What should my next step be?

Thanks,

 

It could be an off the shelf insert like save a thread or something better like a Time Sert. If a Time Sert, someone screwed up big time during the install.

Proceed cautiously....and await those more knowledgeable than I to respond.
Plenty of youtubes concerning inserts to give you an idea of what's going on.

 

Is that actual adhesive on the threads, or is that grease? Just wondering if maybe someone didn't install correctly, at-home job, or unfamiliarity with the product. If it was a helicoil you'd know, they're like springs. It looks more like a Fix-a-Thread to me, but I'm not seeing the ridges on either of the 1st two/last 2 threads. To that point, every thread-saver product has its thing, like, Recoils have vertical posts at 3/6/9/12 oclock, Helicoils are a coil versus one big cast piece, for example.

How'd the coil pack look on that specific cylinder? Any browning, evidence of blowback? Any idea what the threading is on the repair sleeve, so you can find a replacement?

I'm thinking maybe someone failed to clean the hole properly with brake cleaner when installing, or they fired it up before the adhesive cured, if that's adhesive on the threads.

I'm not the definitive source on this topic. Others on here are far more versed than me.

 

In the words of my shop foreman
"Order a head"
Naw I'm sure there are options.

 

Figure out the sleeve size annd type and get another one to repair the head properly this time. Then install new plug.

 

shifty,

I put some anti-seize on the threads before I took the picture. The sleeve's threads needed cleaning, but the buildup was soft, like greasy dirt, and not like dried loctite. I really needed to move the truck, or I would have waited...

 

The good news - plug looks fine. I’d be tempted to throw some red loctite on, send it and forget about it for 50k miles or so.

 

No point in waiting until you are ready for the final fix. Whatever the final fix may be, you're going to want to have an old toothbrush and a can of brake cleaner, drench the toothbrush, stick it in the hole and spin it to clean everything out of the threads. I'd probably do it 3-4 times just to make sure I got everything out.

 

I need to know that the plug will come out of the sleeve before I loctite the sleeve in place. It would suck if whomever put the loctite on the plug instead of the sleeve. My local hardware store didn't have nuts that fit for me try to to separate them myself, so I'm going to take the plug and sleeve to my local machine shop tomorrow.

I'm hopeful they can tell me who made the sleeve, in case there are more.

 

That actually may be what they did!

But yeah. Machine shop can check the threads. Given you only need to replace the plugs - if you use good Iridium plugs - every 80k miles or so, it may actually be smarter to just to sleeve the next plug.

 

I wanted to follow up on this…

I took the plug/sleeve to Apple’s Machine Shop in Yorktown. A very helpful young man identified the sleeve right away. I told him my situation, and he spent 10 minutes or so walking me through what I needed to do.

First he got out his tool box full of thread repair and other goodies and showed me what I needed. Then called the local Advance Auto to see if they had the repair kit. They did not, so he pulled it up on Amazon. It’s a HeliCoil brand Save-A-Thread repair kit. He strongly recommended against re-using the sleeve, or using red Loctite, and he told me to use a new plug. He said the repeated getting hot then getting cold eventually destroys the Loctite.

He gave me a tutorial on installing the sleeve and then using the tool to lock it in place. I gave him twenty bucks and told him to get himself lunch.

I later went to York Bolt to get two nuts to see if I could separate the sleeve from the plug. I really wanted to know if the plug had been loctited in the sleeve. York Bolt has everything, but didn’t have what I needed. The guy that helped me mic’d the outside of the sleeve at 16.9mm, and said he’d never heard of a bolt (nut) that size. I asked if it could be SAE, but it didn’t fit any common fraction. I believe the young man at Apple’s knew he didn’t have the technology to get that sleeve off.

The price for the repair kit I needed was the same at my local O’Reilly’s as it was on Amazon, so I ordered from it from O’Reilly’s.

 

Thanks for the follow up!