I was driving down the freeway when a huge white cloud came out of the tailpipe and the car died. Pulled spark plug number 3 and it looks chewed up. What could've caused this? I don't think I was boosting at the either.

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/n...a/DSC02177.jpg

 

holy crap. dont know what caused it, but that spark plug is DONE lol.

 

Time for a compression test.

Also might not hurt to bring the crank around so that #3 is at TDC and have a look down the plug hole with your eyeball and a tiny flashlight. Make sure nothing funky happened to the piston.

That sort of destruction kinda suggests FOD.

 

+1 for sure! How this happened on a non-interference motor will be interesting....must have been det...

 

I would not do a compression test yet, first clean out that cylinder...
White smoke is coolant, so my guess is detonation killed your plug and head gasket.

 

lol

 

White cloud could have been all the fuel that you Didn't burn in that cylinder getting dumped down the exhaust.

Honestly though do you neglect your motor that bad and not check your plugs every once and a while? That's brutal.

 

Thats not normal? All 4 of mine look like that when I change them...

 

Lol

 

That looks like physical contact.

Possibilities include:

1- a small screw (check the throttle body butterfly screws)
2- dropped a valve
3- piston came apart

 

I don't suppose you have tried to turn it over since then have you? I'm going to guess its not going to sound good when you do.

 

oh the carnage!

hope everything is okie.

 

Gonna tear the head off on my next day off. The engine's rebuild with only 9k miles. Looks like something made contact with it. I'll take more pics for you guy's entertainment. :P The engine was running great before this happened. Just passed smog with flying colors a week before and a oil change 1k miles ago.

 

You are not that same guy on m.n that was going to try increasing compression by gluing spare change onto the top of the piston are you?

That spark plug is seriously trashed; I've never seen one that bad myself. Sorry it happened. It is hard to tell from the picture but is the deformation from impact, or from melting? Probably not melting, just wondering.

 

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/n...a/DSC02192.jpg
http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/n...a/DSC02178.jpg

No, I'm the the same guy. That guy's smoking crack.
Here's a couple of other shots. Looks like impact to me.
There's a sharp cut on the edge, the ceramic in the middle is gone and electrode is bent at 90*. The ground electrode is smashed against the edge and possibly melted.

 

Looks like it melted to me. Clogged injector and reeeeealy ******* lean maybe?

 

Hopefully just melted. Because if something made contact with it I'd hate to see what it did to my cylinder walls. I'll try to find out by tuesday.

 

I wonder what the chances are of a spark plug breaking under combustion. Looks like the electrode is broken off way down inside. Don't think an electrode would have been able to bash the end of the plug to that though. Just a thought.

 

wow, I was just about to come in here and post a picture of a completely carb encrusted spark plug from my old motor but that's just a little more impressive...

 

That plug is fucked. In the ***. Hard.