It always amazes me how much longer some things take to do than I initially figured. I'll admit right now that other than Grade 9 automechanics, I've had no formal automotive training. But I do seem to have some meager level of mechanical understanding and a background in electronics and add to that a bunch of manuals, reading online forums of repairs/explanations and yes, even Youtube, I'm learning as I go. 14 months ago I had a Nissan Leaf and Jeep. Then I added my first 1975 Westy and started working on it and I was hooked. Now I have the three I previously have mentioned.
While I'm sure some will question the validity of this but I assure you, it happened and my youngest daughter can attest to it. The absolute horrendous, stomach-sinking sound and shaking that came from our one running bus a couple months ago as we drove along at 50km/hour on 88th Ave in Fort Langley was a sudden shock. I thought for sure we'd lost a rod or somehow a piston broke or something incredibly bad. The noise and rattling and intense shaking from the rear of the bus was simply terrible. 2 seconds later it stopped running and we gently coasted to the side of the road and sat there and wondered. The best part of that moment was that I was exactly, and I mean exactly two houses away from my ex-wife's house and I simply could not imagine having me and the bus that she was quite against me buying die there. I could not believe the timing.
So we tried to start it up again (yes, I know: damage damage damage but from what I heard, I had to really wonder how much worse it truly would be if I tried to get it going in any way). I simply had to get to my own house and driveway, a mere two blocks away. Well it started but it sounded terrible and unless I kept the gas peddle reasonably pressed down, it simply would stall again and die. So giving it more gas than made any sense, I managed to edge it slowly (and I mean slowly!) down the road, shaking and banging and rattling away that must have had people look out their windows. Freaking red light at Glover Road and it died again. Sweating bullets, I waited for the light to go green and tried to start it again. It had to be a careful combination of starting and lots of gas or it would die again. Other drivers were now clearly looking my way wondering what the noise was. I crawled along Glover and edged into my driveway and shut down.
I could not imagine what disaster I would find in that engine compartment (assuming I could even see what it was) and I did not want to face it just yet. I went in the house and made a coffee as I mentally thought out scenarios and what each one would cost, all the the way to complete engine replacement. Oh yeah, and did I mention? This bus is actually my 18 year old daughter's bus. Her pride a joy. Voted at her school WGSS as "Cool ride of the year". I hardly ever drive it. I get to fix it but I'm not allowed to drive it. And now..........it looked like I'd killed it.
So, coffee in hand and flashlight at the ready, I opened the rear engine door. It was less than a second for me to see what then took my brain many, many seconds to comprehend. There standing up way out of place was one of my spark plug wires up in the air.....with the spark plug still attached. Seriously, I must have stared at it without moving for at least 30 seconds as my brain went in to a WTF......WTF.....WTF loop I could not break out of. I could not have been more surprised had I found a watermelon sitting there.
Then my consciousness finally returned and I reached out and gingerly pulled the end with the spark plug towards me. I started thinking it must have had it's threads all mostly stripped from years of previous folks doing a bad job of changing plugs and the threads finally gave up. But as I looked at the threaded end of the spark plug, I saw no telltale metal shavings or bits on the threads. Other than looking like a used spark plug, it looked utterly normal. So I then peered into the hole (deep under the tin, of course) and with what little I could see, the hole had threads and no obvious damage. I kept looking back and forth between that spark plug and the hole but could see no clue that would explain how that could possibly have popped (exploded) out of there. The bus was running fairly well right up to the second it happened.
So what else could I do but get a new plug and try and see how it went in putting it back in. Well, as per my earlier explanation of my lack of expertise, even though I've done lots of work on my buses in the past year, I have not yet done an actual full tune-up (but I plan to soon and have all my learning done) so I had never changed a spark plug on these engines yet. Ok so I'm sure lots of you have lived this already and possibly many times but to quote my daughter with a healthy "OMG", who the heck designed such a nightmare of a place to have to put in a spark plug? Is it going in straight? What the heck is "straight"? I kept running back to one of the other buses to peer into it's tin cover to try and memorize the bizarre angle that spark plug had to be oriented at to go in properly. After all this, I believed the threads had to already be compromised and possibly they were not even good enough to hold any more and here I was, Mr. Novice, trying to thread in a plug into that questionable hole at an angle that was very difficult with the engine tin in the way and no easy way to feel/see how the spark plug was progressing. What was too easy to turn (not going in at all)? What was too hard to turn (cutting nice new threads at the wrong angle)? If I was sweating earlier, I was a freaking Niagra falls at this point. I was using a new, small torque wrench that supposedly makes a little "tick" noise when you get to the set torque. I'm upside down. sweat pouring down my face and dripping off my nose and all I can hear is my heart pounding in my ears, trying to listen for that little "tick" noise from my torque wrench and continually praying to the VW Gods to please not suddenly rip through the remaining threads and end my ability to get that spark plug snugged in properly.
FINALLY! The torque wrench makes that wonderful tick noise and I know it's in there at the proper tightness. I felt it was at the right angle. I was relatively sure it did not have the hard-to-turn experience of cutting threads at the wrong angle. It just kept nagging in the back of my head "how the heck did it pop out of there?" Now the moment of truth. I got in the driver's seat and turned the key. If my heart was pounding before, it was now pretty much in fibrillation. But the engine fired up and immediately sounded............normal! Really? Was I really that lucky? I ran back and stuck my head in as much as I dared and listened and listened but it sounded like it always did. Nothing bad. Nothing expensive-sounding. I went back and gingerly revved it a couple times and all was good.
So I've decided all it could have been was the PO or whoever used to service it, possibly in fear of stripping the threads, didn't put the plug in very tightly and it slowly, eventually unscrewed itself until only a thread or half-thread held it in and it finally popped out. You likely are wondering, just like me, that surely that cylinder was losing a bunch of compression leaking around those threads near the end of it unscrewing and I don't have an explanation. Sometimes that bus purrs along and sometimes it's a little rough sounding. Maybe it was a little rough and we just did not notice. But that's the only explanation I can figure.
So why did I start this post with my comment about things taking longer than I always expect? Because two days ago I went back in and changed out the other three spark plugs so I would have all four as new ones. All the others were fairly snug but I'd venture to say not as tightly as I would have expected. But it is a huge pain dealing with the lack of space, the angles and the engine tin with it's small hole a couple inches above the plug. Even with my new set of "wobbly" extensions, it's no picnic and worrying that one minor mistake and you could start stripping the threads...............it's a very stressful job and I'm glad it's done.