i know the heat shields have to twist off, they cant be pulled, (i know from experiance lol) and most likely they are seized in there...

also i take it that it broke after the hex so theres no way to grip it...

FYI, i never torque my plugs...if they go in to much, it can offset the gap i think...when they are tight, i just turn them another 1/3 to a 1/2 turn, and its never given me a problem with the 6 vehicles ive owned that ive done tune-ups to.

did it break flush to the head?

 

This is exactly what happened. All 7 plugs came out except this one. I have been hitting it with PB since yesterday, hopefully I can get it out with an ez out today. We will see.

 

any results with the spark plug?

was the plug that broke binding early when you started to remove it? luckily for me since i just had a tune up last yr, when i do the plenum i dont have to mess with those damn plugs

 

use marvel mystery oil, PB is crap. i had my breech plug in my muzzleloader get rusted in place, i soaked it for 2 weeks with pb blaster, and got nothing, i finally took some marvel mystrey oil (red clear container at walmart thats marked for using in gas and oil, though its the same ol marvel mystery oil its always been) and let it soak for 1 1/2 days,and what do you know, it came out without a fight.... its also good for freein up locked up motors, though the motors always smoke afterwards, but hey atleast you got a working motor again.

i tell you all youll prolly need is a little cap full of the stuff and let it sit for a few hours then try to get it out with an easy out

 

so from the sounds of it, getting a spark plug out aint the end of the world, just a minor bump bc you have to go buy a set of Ezout bits

 

what brands are you using for the plugs and wires? somewhere on the hughes website it stated to replace your front 02 sensors as well. is this really necessary and ar eyou planning on doing it? looking forward to hearing how thes rest of the fix went for ya.

 

i second the marvel mystery oil... great stuff!!

 

I will do a full write up tomorrow of my experience. Broken plug came out with an ez out and a little elbow grease. Truck is up and purring right now. Gonna do a sea foam treatment on it later this week and then I should be good.

 

Ok, so this was a very long weekend. To revisit this is what I did.....

Coolant flush and fill....

Oil and filter change.....

New plugs.....

New secondary wires.....

New distributor cap....

New intake gaskets....

New APC plenum gasket and plate....

And that is it. Everything went pretty well except I broke the lower half of a plug off in the block so that set me back for a while. I ended up getting it out with 24 hours of PB Blaster and an EZ out with lots of shoulder put into it. Luckily nothing else broke off and all the wires, plugs, caps, etc got installed with ease.

I spent 3 hours working on Friday, 7 hours on Saturday, and 4 hours on Sunday to do the whole job. I would say my experience for this sort of job was minimal at best. The extent of my automotive experience before this was maybe changing a fan belt, rotating tires, changing a battery, etc so this was a pretty big dive for me with limited tools.

Looking back I wouldn't say it was very difficult, just go very slow and it helps if you have a friend you can call on to help hand you tools while you are in the engine bay, otherwise it will be a LOT moving around and climbing in and out of the engine bay.

After putting it all back together we fired it up and she ran like a charm. I burped the coolant system to get the gurgling noise out of the dash after we were done. The truck starts much better and sounds better too.

The plenum was leaking pretty good, mostly back towards the rear of the plate. I had pooled oil and I took lots of pics so I will load them up tonight hopefully so everyone can see all the shots I took.

My only question is this. I thought for sure that I had ordered the intake manifold bolts that are TTY when I ordered all the pieces I needed for this job. Well yesterday (Sunday) as I was putting everything back together I realized I didn't have the manifold bolts. Of course the dealership was closed and none of the auto parts stores carried the bolts.

Well I called my mechanic friend and he said that if I torque the bolts to the correct lbs that it shouldn't matter if they are TTY or not. Sooooo..... I went to the local hardware store and got the exact bolts that are automotive grade and used them instead.

So far things seem to be running just fine. My question is, "did I screw up bad". I am sure I will get a few people saying yes and a few saying no. I torqued the bolts to 12 lbs in the correct order. If I leave the bolts am I ok? Would it be wise to back the bolts out and order the actual TTY bolts from the dealership and use those? If I do that can I just back out the bolts I put in and slide the TTY bolts in and be good to go? What say you?

 

youre good if you bought automotive grade bolts, and advance and autozone both list an intake bolt set for our trucks. as far as getting new bolts dont worry about it, TTY just means Torque-To-Yield, basically meaning once their torqued down to spec, they cant be retorqued because the bolt has already been stretched to its max, and wont hold down like it should.

basically a TTY bolt is a one time use bolt, unless you use it on something that doesnt require torquing