RAV work

I did a lot of carwork last week, all on the RAV 4 though. It had finally gotten to the point it would not run long at all before starting to stumble. The plug wire kept getting loose almost immediately. And I also started to get the check engine light coming on. Interestingly, it happened while on my way to Home Depot to buy a new water heater for the house, but that is a different time-consuming story. Anyway, I ended up buying a cool, cheap OBD2 code reader at Harbor Freight to double check my suspicions about the engine misfires, and when I used it, I learned that there were 5 codes. Two were for the suspect cylinder, two others were for multiple cylinders, and one was for a different cylinder. I also bought a neat Haynes Repair Manual for the RAV 4 at AutoZone. It gives complete illustrated instructions on just about everything you can think to do to the car.

I decided to replace all the spark plugs and bought some at Advance Auto. Nothing special, just your basic NGK plugs. I started with the obviously bad cylinder and could not get the plug out. I could get a grip on it with the long, deep plug socket, but I could not extract it from the hole (about 5 inches or so deep). I tried a long time and moved on to the second plug which came out with no problem. So I buttoned everything back up and the next day, I regrouped and decided to buy a really nice plug puller with a magnetized socket. Eleven bucks instead of 99 cents.

Next, I went to use this on the bad plug and could no longer even get a grip on the plug. It would not push down far enough. It felt like I was hitting on something rubber on top of the plug itself. The kid next door to me came over to help and we tried everything we could think of to get it out and failed. Eventually, I trekked back to Advance Auto and bought this cool super-long needle nose pliers and a good LED flashlight. With those, I was able to see some blockage and was able to break off a piece. Upon closer inspection, I determined that the plug wire boot had broken in place and that 90 percent or so of it was still down there. More poking and pulling loosened it a bit and eventually, I came up with the idea of using a turkey pin (basically, a very thin strong wire) as a type of pick. I bent the end and was able to hook the rest of the stranded boot plug. After that, I had to go back to Advance to buy some new plug wires as the old ones were clearly dead.

Finally, I was able to get the rest of the plugs out and replaced, and put on the new plug wires. Nathan had driven by on his way to his grandma's and actually stopped to help me for a few minutes. It went very smoothly, and now the RAV seems to be purring like a kitten. I just hope that there wasn't much/any leftover junk from the shredded plug wire boot that will find its way into the cylinder itself and possibly cause damage to the piston rings. Time will tell.