Went lean, burned sparkplug. Screwed?
I had a little problem at Nelson this weekend and I'm wondering if I am screwed. '86 ITC Civic, stock carb.
I lost a cylinder during Sunday qualifying. Pulled the plugs and the number 4 spark plug is shown below. The other plugs were fine, no metal, very clean and nice.
When I pulled the fuel filter it was full of tank foam. So my thinking is that I lost fuel pressure and it went lean.
Would it make sense that this was the cause? Does it make sense that only #4 was affected?
It seems to me that when we swapped plugs a few weeks ago at ORP that 4 had the least carbon and 1 had the most. Am I making that up, or is it normal for 1 to be richest and 4 to be leanest? If so, does it make sense that only 4 would be affected?
Now the worse question: how screwed am I and what do I do about it?
I ran the car about 1.5 laps of qualifying after the plug went bad. I didn't immediately realize I was down on power, I was getting passed by fast cars and I was trying to stay out of the way.
Replaced the bad plug and the car starts right up. Seems to run fine. I decided to go ahead and run the race and hope for the best. I started the race, the car seemed to run fine and then on lap 2 I lost power again. I figured I was completely screwed, so I went straight to paddock. Doh! The wire from plug 1 had come off. Put it back on, runs ok again.
So, the car ran hard about 3-4 miles after the plug was burned. It warmed up a good 10 minutes in grid, ran a pace lap and about 1.25 miles of hard running before the plug wire came off. Then ran the rest of the lap and into paddock.
What do I do now? How damaged is the head likely to be? Not to mention the piston and cylinder walls. And what, if anything, should I do about it? Is the damage already done? Is there any point in pulling the head off to stare at the damage? Or do I just run it and hope for the best?
Thanks in advance for any advice you can give.
Jim Hardesty
ITC 1986 Honda Civic Diablo Rojo Verde
Never argue your tab at the end of the night. Remember, you're hammered and they’re sober.
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