Damaged spark plug

WTF?!?!?! (Reposted from the DIY spark plug thread)

Decided to change out the plugs yesterday (at 55k and first replacement) and came across something I never would have expected. I did the passenger side first and then the driver's side (a PITA and, in fact, I had to remove a couple of other pieces beyond what the OP had suggested).

Anyhow, When I got to the last spark plug I noticed I was having difficulty seating the spark plug socket on the spark plug. I spent probably 10 minutes trying to get the socket on and finally accepted that it wasn't going on. I grabbed a flashlight and took a look and saw what I thought at first was plastic or styrofoam. I wondered what in hell it was doing there, and how it got there.

The more I thought about it the more I realized that styrofoam and plastic just didn't make sense. I then took my phone and was able to get some close up pics and it was then I realized that it was ceramic pieces. I took an air compressor and was able to blow all the pieces out and replace the final plug.

What in the world would cause something like this to happen? This is the first plug change. Has anyone else ever experienced such a thing and, is there the potential for damage?

 

Most common answer: failure to correctly (a) seat the spark plug socket and (b) not correctly holding the top of the wrench so that the extension shaft is DIRECTLY in the center of the plug hole so that no side-force is applied which can break the insulator easily. That is probably what happened here otherwise it would have been missing 100% of the time and running quite badly. This is one of those places where universal joints should never be used.

Yes, I have done this myself, although not on my tacoma. You can't snake the socket in and over the plug, you need a perfectly straight shot and then a careful pair of hands to hold the head of the ratchet centered while the other hand applies torque. In the very few cases I did this, the "crack" was distinctly felt through the wrench, with an "oh shit" immediately following.

 

Short trips in cold weather can crack them. Sometimes they just are junk from the factory, other times something or someone breaks them.

 

you may have inadvertently broke it with the socket. It happens a lot.

 

In other words operator error. As stated if this had been broken for any time period you would have noticed a severe miss on that cylinder and would have thrown a code.

 

I would say it was cracked on install, ans it fell apart when the boot was removed. The boot would have kept it shielded.

 

Thanks for the replies, guys, but as I noted in my original post, this is the first time the plugs have been changed and, when I attempted to change this plug, I couldn't even get the socket over the plug. That's how I knew something was wrong. So, it's not as if I somehow damaged it while attempting to remove it since I could never get a socket over it to begin with.

 

If the socket came down on the plug off center, you could have simply cracked the insulator off of it at that moment. It happens, nothing to worry about. It doesn't make any difference if the plugs had ever been changed previously.