Loose plugs and ticking.

I have always read that these engines ls due to the direct injection were noisy. Mine certainly was however it being a recent acquisition I had no baseline to compare. My wife’s GR-FE in her FJ is relatively quiet and my other vehicles are all 3rd gen Hemi’s so while not quiet are not this loud. Well my 120k service was soon and that meant plugs. I read how much of pita they are and they kind of are or at least the very first plug on the drivers bank is but other than that it was about an hour and a half job. Well wouldn’t you know it every single plug but one was loose. Well after replacing the plugs and EGR valve I fired it up and it was substantially more quiet. Moral of the story is check your plugs. If you think your engine sounds louder than it should then check the torque in those plugs.

 

Quite common actually. Same issue on my 2017.

 

Wonder what causes that to happen. Happens on a bunch of them but all were tight on mine, and I haven’t heard any noise since I changed them so I assume they are all still tight from my torque job on the replacements.

 

Happens enough that maybe its a thing. But my cynical self says its because it came that way out of the factory.

 

Could be, although it’s also happened to some after doing replacement jobs and torquing them properly. Just odd.

 

Mmmm. Well thats no good.

Poor machining on the thread pitch?

 

Mine were loose from the factory. I never torque them. Hand tight and a little more. No issues since replacing them and I've done them twice, 19k miles and 60k miles.

 

Yeah it was weird. All the coil packs had obvious signs of blow by with the exception of one. Either way I snugged the new ones down goodentight and slapped it all back together. Them being loose was definitely a contributing factor for all the engine noise I had as it has quieted considerably.

 

Did you replace the coil boots?
Assuming you can get them for toyota coils.....
Very important practice we always recommend on fords...
Wasting your time replacing spark plugs & re-using the coil boots...

Coil boots can develope carbon tracks & those tracks will transfer to the new sparkplug ceramics....

 

I did not. Unfortunately they were not available at my local dealer or parts houses . But they unlike the COP’s on fords are much more robust and in my case they just needed a quick wipe down with some WD and a dab of dialectic grease and they were good to go.