spark plug removal

[maglite1]

never thought ide see the day ide ask how to remove a spark plug but here goes lol , as most here will know i recntly done head gasket / water pump / cam belt on my 406 1.8 petrol , since ive done it the car runs sweet and has covered about 4000 since i done the job .

im having trouble starting the car when its been layed up over night and have been looking for variouse reasons , i thought the fuel system might have had an air leak but cant find one , i didnt take the plugs out when i took head off the car and im now suspecting i might have knocked the gap out on a plug when re fitting head , the car turns over a good few times and is stuggling to fire up , once its running it runs rough for about a minute then will run fine rest of the day even if left 5 or 6 hours it fires up instantly , now i cant get the feking plugs out , i have 2 plug sockets that wont fit down the tube and i have a box spanner/socket 19mm that wont go down either , im sat filing the edges of the box socket thing now as its only fraction off fitting in the tube to the plug , does anyone know the size of the plug nut and anyone suggest what i need to get them out as non of my sockets or box spanner/socket will fit down the tube , also anyone got any other suggestions as to why it would be hard to fire up , its not loosing oil or water and runs perfect once its been started .

[maglite1]

16 mm long reach socket got em out but there fine , time to look elsewhere .

[DiscoPol]

Damn and buggeration, i hope you get it sorted buddy it was an awesome HG change that had to be done, its just a shame now you cant get it quite right.

I have no real input as its a petrol and I have zero experience of petrol 406's but i have everything crossed for you that its something simple and easy to fix.


Disco

[Welly]

What about the spark plug coil pack(s) ?

Or HT leads earthing to ground? (get someone to crank it cold at night and look for stray sparks - don't touch it though).

[FarmerPug]

I touched the ht leads on my suzuki to see why it was spluttering a strange and unpleasent feeling went up my arm and caused a loss of power. It was very shocking

[maglite1]

hello again guys , plugs where all spot on light brown colour and all gaps same , didnt mess with them as there dual point type just cleaned em up with brass wire brush , ill know more tomorrow or later when i try it , done another 154 mile trip today without a single splutter , just dreading it dying on me with worst winter in 1000 years forcast , anyone know where i can buy snow chains lol .

crashed my astra 2.0 cdti on 5th of jan last year and worked under it in 12 inches of snow for few days before i bought me pug ;-) , ill be sat in front of log fire this year car or no car .

[steve_earwig]

I touched the ht leads on my suzuki to see why it was spluttering a strange and unpleasent feeling went up my arm and caused a loss of power. It was very shocking

"Think I better dance now..." I've lost count of the times I've got a belt off a car's HT, nowdays they're powerful enough to stop your heart too

Oooh, that's one up for the diesels then. Just the one mind.

[FarmerPug]

ht leads are bad but taking apart a disposable camera to make it reuseable which is a fairly good thing to do in this day and age when recycling is so popular, well i touched some metal part of the inside of the camera that for all the size of it delevers a huge zap which wasnt nice

[steve_earwig]

That was probably the capacitor for the flash (the whining noise they make before the flash goes off is an oscillator charging this capacitor).

One of my proudest moments came when I found a large yet portable telly in a skip at work. I fired it up and it worked ok, the reason it was in the skip was the panel with the controls had been shoved inside so you couldn't change the channels or anything. Ok, I thought, that'll be an easy job to fix. The problem was I needed to remove the tube to get to it and I was just levering off the connectors for the degaussing loop when I was reminded of the huge capacitors & many thousands of volts they use... That's one small step for an engineer, one giant leap across the room for an idiot

[Welly]

Oooh, that's one up for the diesels then. Just the one mind.

Well with 80volts going to the HDi injectors, take-your-eye-out fuel pressures and a separating bottom pulley smack-you-in-the-face aux belt it's only a small 'one up'

[highlander]

I was in Indonesia (where the Wifely Person is from) and was unplugging a computer from a switched multiway power strip. The switches on each of the sockets in that strip, it seems, were just for decoration - as I discovered when I accidentally touched one of the prongs on the plug while it was still making contact and receiving current.

My muscles spasmed so hard I jumped back about 6 feet. No lasting damage, but let me tell you - receiving 230V 13A 60Hz through your whole body - entering in through your fingertips and leaving through your toes as it goes to ground - is enough to ruin your whole afternoon.

[FarmerPug]

I mind wiring up a plug socket in the shed and as usual the dog follows me everwere, so there he was standing beside me, i got shocked but it must have passed through me and he got a dose of it also, not a happy doggy after it.

[steve_earwig]

My dad made an electric fence out of a car' electronic ignition, it was for keeping the rabbits off the flowers but was very effective on dogs too - more than enough to send them shreiking off into the distance

entering in through your fingertips and leaving through your toes as it goes to ground

Were you standing in a puddle at the time?

I think I may have mentioned this before but I used to live "in" Ponder's End Telephone Exchange, on the ground floor was all the derelict Strowger equipment (you know, "budududud, bzzzzzzz".) which they were recovering g-r-a-d-u-a-l-l-y (time=money an' all that). I used to go exploring at night for something to do and one night I spotted at 240 volt relay. 240 volt relay? I'm 'aving that! Unscrew from rack, hold body in left hand, wire cutters in the right... At was at this point that I discovered it was all still powered up. 230 volts up my right arm, through my chest and out my left arm. When reality returned I could hear this scream echoing around the exchange (...aaargh!...rgh!...rgh!...rgh!). Afterwards I realised that if it had stopped my heart it would have been a few days before anyone found me

For a few years I worked on exchange main distribution frames. The old connection blocks had tags sticking out both sides, left for existing wiring, right for connecting jumpers with solder, jumpers are basically for connecting exchange equipment on one side of the frame to the outgoing lines on the other. There's all sorts on there, 75 volts ac ringing, ISDNs at either 80 or 130 volts and god know's what else in the way of alarm circuits and private wires. You were meant to wear a leather gauntlet but few did, so every now and then a sudden shock would make you impale the back of your hand on the tags ("tag rash"). What made it worse was the amount of equipment they were cramming in was making it hotter and hotter in the frame rooms, and when you got really sweaty even the normal 50 volts of a phone line could give you a tingle that made the muscles in your hand contract so you dropped your pliers.

[highlander]

I was barefoot and my feet were sweaty (as it is a bit bloody hot in Indonesia) - path of least resistance, and all that. At least I didn't suffer any burns, and I wasn't on my own as I was getting zapped (small consolation as that is; I'd have preferred it if switching off the outlet actually stopped the flow of electricity in the first place)

[DiscoPol]

I used to do a bit of Panel bashing years ago, and was on top of a 4 unit bolting together the busbars in a pumping station down in the thick of Gloucester, when i heard the unmistakeable sound of a diesel back up generator starting up,a thick tw@t operative for Severn Trent water had only turned up looked down the well and decided the level was too high, he just pushed the "do not start electrician working" sign out the way cut off the padlock and started the genny up, it was in the early days of the environment agency and they were clamping down on overflow to river from any kind of foul water stations, he decided a dead sparky was better than a fine from the E.A, well i heard it, felt it, and damn near carked it, you have never seen an old man run so fast, i would have happily killed him if i had caught him! it luckily was the yellow phase i was tightening up and that was beside the earth bar back in them days i got 240v through the hand from thumb to little finger, burnt of a good layer or two of skin and melted a perfectly good 13mm spanner into the busbars,and i let the f*cker overflow out of spite afterwards, cost em about 15 grand from what i can remember in fines and i got f*ck all but a week off and little sympathy.

alls well that ends well, i heard he fell in one of the digester pits at Tewkesbury sewage works a month later, he didnt drowned unfortunately but i hope the fecker thought he would