Glow Plug Help
 

Hi, replaced my glow plugs last weekend and two look really strange. Last summer the mechanic had the car for two months and returned it running better, but not perfect and said something was wrong with #4 but could figure it out. It smokes a bit, keeps excellent oil pressure (even when hot) has 220K (actual) on it, and seemed like it was missing. Last spring I did a compression test on it and four of the cylinders were in the 310-320 range #4 was lower than the others (290). Perked up with a little oil squirted into it. Figured I'd drive it. With weather getting colder and dash glow plug light no longer working, it was time to replace the plugs. Reamed out all the plug areas, and replaced with new. Car started much easier, but still smokes quite a bit. #1 plug looks like the tip is bent. Hard to tell from the picture, but #4 glow plug looks like the end was flattened an someone cut a "v" into it. My injectors are have less than 20K on them, but could this be caused by bad injectors dumping fuel on them?

Thanks,

Some weird **** going on there.

... I recommend you take some MACRO photo's of those mashed plugs and post them here!

If the Injector Nozzle is worn and spraying on the Golw Plug it can melt and even cut off the tip of a Glow Plug and even burn through the Prechamber.

Take a good look and see if the tips of the #1 and #4 looks like it is being burned off.

Also if some of those Glow Plugs are Autolite Glow Plugs; after 6 months use I had 2 of my Autolite Glow Plug tips swell up to the extent that I had trouble removinging them from the Head.
I have also seen pics on one of the forums where it looked as iff the Autolite Glow Plug tips had explodded.

Hey can you put a ohm meter on those & post readings?
Have you tried to see if they still glow?
Purely for interest.
I have seen worse
You would be very foolish not to replace all of them

Mashed is definitely the way to describe number 4 (and clipped - with wire cutters. I'll post new pictures, but can't until Saturday. Not sure what brand they were all installed by mechanics. I did the new ones, and they are Monarks. I just don't want to kill the new ones if it's an injector issue, and I never thought about a prechamber issue - how can these be diagnosed?

The deformed glow plug from #4 is shown first. Was going to show the deviated one from #1 , but can't get the file resized to upload. The #4 (shown) is the one I'm most concerned with. Any thoughts? Would like some opinions before running it again. (don't want to mess up the new glow plugs)

I would suspect either the injector is cutting through it or some debris in the prechamber causing it. I suggest pulling the prechamber and inspecting it for damage.



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I have seen pics on one of the forums of Autolite Glow Plugs exhibited the same exploded tip.
I know that after 6 Months of use 2 of my Autolite Glow Plugs had tips swollen enought that I had a lot of trouble pulling them out.
And the above happend in an Engine with Injectors that I had previously rebuilt with new Injector Nozzles.

I Have had no more issues with swollen Glow Plug tips since I got rid of the Autolites.

Since the deformed tip of the plug seems slightly wider than the rest of the body of the plug, I'm thinking that the problem was caused from the inside out rather than from the outside in. Hence it must have exploded rather than been eroded by a faulty injector???????

Another concern
 

Thanks for the input, while thinking about this, another concern came up. Is the end of that glow plug (or glow plugs because the last mechanic to work on it noted the plug he pulled out was "weird") floating around in my prechamber causing problems? I don't want to go after stuff that's not there, but the engine was not running that well before.