[Shop-talk] Stuck Spark Plug

[Douglas Shook]

Hi Paul,

That is a great suggestion about trying it once the heads are hot,
particularly for an aluminum head engine. Great advice!

On Tue, Nov 11, 2025 at 5:18 AM Paul Parkanzky <parkanzky at gmail.com> wrote:

> Are you trying to get them out on a hot or cold engine? Toss the ratchet
> with the plug wrench and a pair of thick gloves (for the heat) in the
> center console and next time he parks it after a nice long drive on the
> highway have him try the plugs right away. That aluminum head will have a
> much higher coefficient of linear expansion than steel so getting it good
> and hot should give you a better shot.
>
> -Paul
>
> On Mon, Nov 10, 2025 at 11:59 PM John T Blair <jblair1948 at cox.net> wrote:
>
>> On Monday, November 10, 2025 at 07:41:27 PM EST,  you wrote:
>>
>> >I am a big believer in impact wrenches, air or electric. It is that
>> fast, hard whack they give
>> >that actually puts less torque against the threads. Penetrating oil may
>> or may not do
>> >anything, but if you wanted to soak them down overnight and then hit it
>> with an impact
>> >wrench in the morning, I would not be surprised if they all came out
>> without any damage.
>> >
>> >If they do not need changing at this point (new plugs can last 100K
>> miles) you might just
>> >want to leave sleeping dogs lie.
>>
>> Douglas,
>>
>> Currently that's what we are doing.  He got it back together as I was
>> leaving.  He said he fired it up, and took for a test drive, no CIL, ran
>> fine.  But this is something I've been afraid of
>> with the cars going 100Kmi / plug change.  We really don't know how many
>> miles are on these plugs as he's the 3rd owner.  I was figuring that if he
>> was going to be in there, why not changed the plugs.  But when we ran into
>> this problem he and I agreed, "if it aint broke, don't fix it".
>>
>> But I've got an 06 Scion xB with 64K mi, and a 12 second gen xB with
>> 74Kmi and neither has had the plugs changed.  So I'm worried I may have the
>> same problem.[image: Emoji]
>>
>> If we decide to get the plugs out in the near future, I'll keep you
>> posted, but don't hold your breath.
>>
>> Thanks to all that responded.
>>
>> JohnT
>>
>
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