Om nom nom nom

(look closely at cyl 3 plug, top left)

Randomly yesterday driving to the store, we were stopped at a red light and suddenly felt the car burping a bit. Instantly i knew it was a misfire, but no codes which was strange. Continued driving to the store...shopped a bit, came back out, car fired up just fine, still misfiring quietly... drove around for about 10 miles running errands. Again, i can tell its missing, just no codes yet...bizzare

Today my gf calls me at work. CEL is on, P0303 (misfire cyl 3). So I did some reading of old threads here and saw that it could range from plugs to coils all the way down to sticky valves to head gasket leaks. So I started with the easy.

Low and behold ... i remove cyl 3 plug ... the ground straps are GONE ... not only that, the plug is all charred up on the porcelain, and the plug wire side of the plug (which is the screw on type) had expanded and was stuck inside the plug wire.

So after some calm diagnosis...turning cyl 3 to TDC .. using a magnet to make sure that no shrapnel was in the cylinder, i reinstalled everything ... gently placed a hand on my netherregions hoping not to hear loud noises, scrapes, thumps, etc ... turn the car on ... idles juuuuust fine .... drove around a bit, seems to be doing well.

I assume that we probably lost some compression from the debris ... but hopefully she is ok.

(and yea, before anyone says, no good on using those bosch plugs ... went with the OEM NGK's this time )

 

I saw your FB post and wondered what kind of car this was.

 

07 Impreza 2.5.

I'm honestly surpised it didn't do crazy damage. The odds of a grounding strap from a plug coming out of the exhaust port on an inline or V oriented engine are far better than from a flat.

Im almost certain (based on the amount of carbon and debris i found, that it literally disintegrated.

Probably in my best interest to give her a fresh oil change to make sure no crap is in the oil