Plug popped out

BurtonF166 · 07-02-2009, 3:51 PM

Yesterday I went out riding at around 3pm, 82 degrees and beautifully sunny. The kind people in Olympia have decided to seal all of the roads by my house = lose gravel and me riding the shoulder at 5mph

Once on real roads, I accelerated lightly and I heard this nasty pop followed by a terrible terrible sound from my engine. I pulled over immediately, gave it a tiny rev without my helmet on and then was pretty much thinking I had blown something big.

I got down and looked up behind the radiator and didnt see much, too dark. I look down and by the headers, there is a nice, non-thread stripped iridum plug! My buddy has a honda road-side kit, so we took the tank and airbox off, threaded it back in, connected everything and rode 130 miles....

How is it possible for a plug to get "popped" out without stripping anything? The person that changed them last must have not tightened them enough....they looked pretty black anyways so Im changing them today. Has this happened to anyone else?

tunil · 07-02-2009, 4:08 PM

ive seen that happen before on a smaller bike. make sure to tighten the plugs properly.

honda3x23 · 07-02-2009, 6:21 PM

put the plug in on the side of the road, forget that lol.. i would have been pissed!!

Twincam · 07-02-2009, 8:05 PM

I've heard of 954RRs having problems with plugs popping out of the heads... but for one to pop out and not strip the threads seems strange.

Did it sound like it was losing pressure before?

BurtonF166 · 07-04-2009, 1:54 AM

No, the bike sounds/feels great. I have never had an issue with the plugs. Newest upgrade is a PC3, but I cant imagine it would cause anything like this. I torqued this one down to its proper value for now, 4 new ones coming up.

rjsimon2nd · 07-05-2009, 11:08 PM

someone forgot to tighten it properly, just make sure to tighten it well this time, people tend to forget that the 'firering' has to crush when tightening, that is the ring on the bottom of the plug, the washer.

reeseyboy · 07-06-2009, 10:20 PM

Had exactly this a couple of weeks ago! 5am on the way to work! Stalled the bike at a junction after loosing my footing and when I went to restart it, it made a "pop" noise and ran on 3 cylinders. When I got to look at it #1 was out, threads all OK!! #2, 3 and 4 were all loose too, with #4 being a quarter turn off from finger tight!
I put it down to the torque figure for the plugs being so low at 12Nm. Nipped them all down and job's a goodun!