spark plug electrode

Hello all,
I've got a 98 with 107k. mi. yesterday while driving the engine started making a loud knocking noise. I decided to pull the spark plugs and discovered on one of them that the electrode had broken off and now resides somewhere inside the engine. What would have caused this to happen? and how should I proceed?

Thanks Brock

 

Hi Chris,
the engine is the six 3.4 Litre engine, the plugs have been in for 2 years, and its not a daily driver. I was thinking of removing the head, is there any good tutorials on this forum for this procedure?

Thanks Brock

 

just stick a really strong magnet and pull the plug core out, then do a compression test, if it looks good run it, the chips of ceramic will just blow out on there own, chances are the head and the pistion are pitted, big deal, it will live you just need to make sure you get the metal core out of the equation or it will ping around until the end of time

 

Hey thanks,
I tried a small tube hooked to a shop vac, but it didn't look like anything came out, tried to wiggle it around as much as possible and still nothing. I then blew some compressed air and something did blow out but I could not find it.

I'll see if I can find a strong magnet or magnetize something that I can tie a string to.

Would it be a bad idea to spray some carb cleaner or other liquid in there and then try the above vac/air procedure again?

Also I noticed that the treads are stripped out of the cylinder head. I was thinking of trying that Time Sert (www.timesert.com) anyone tried this for rethreading?

Brock