Why are most discarded engines missing spark plugs?

[Jack Bennett]

Working on relic cars, tractors, and other interesting machines is as close to a vocation as I want to be to returning to a paid job.

But, the interludes between being physically involved in the actual nuts and bolts part of maintaining the machine, and the periods of “break time” must be filled too.

Normally, I fill this time by perusing the internet sites such as AACA, Dodge Brothers, Classic Tractor forums and other machinery related clubs for further information on the hobby.

However, there is no substitute for actually looking at old machines, in their rusty glory, and getting really close and personal with them.

In the years I have involved myself with playing with old machines I have noted a common thread which seems to run the time span from antique thru classic to modern engines which are either out, and discarded, or still in a seemingly, otherwise desirable, restorable and collectible machine.

And that thread is the same description of their engines almost always include the death  knell of “locked up” or “frozen”.

Closer investigation may reveal that the distributor and carburetor has been protected by a plastic wrapping, the water drained from the cooling system, and the sump still contains oil.

But, the engine has been left sitting with several, or all of the spark plugs removed, which most certainly was a contributing factor to the engine being seized, and a likely candidate for the junk bin.

My query is WHY????? does it seem to be a normal, and possibly even acceptable, practice for a human being, apparently in possession of the amount of mechanical knowledge it takes to remove a spark plug, and the tools necessary to do it, feel the compulsion to remove the spark plug, and leave a gaping hole in the head of a otherwise completely usable engine.

It tears a hole in my heart when I see this, and I think a quorum should be taken to ascertain if this is something I, alone, notice, or is this a wider practice, done by a class of people which secretly harbor a compulsion to make sure the engine is never returned to a usable life.

Jack

 

[ABear]

2 hours ago, Jack Bennett said:

But, the engine has been left sitting with several, or all of the spark plugs removed, which most certainly was a contributing factor to the engine being seized, and a likely candidate for the junk bin.

My query is WHY?????

Interesting enough, many old "wives tales" often repeated through the ages says to do so..

 

https://www.hotrodders.com/threads/storing-engine-on-stand-for-couple-years.50350/

 

"well what i would do is run the engine with freash oil and flood the motor with something like marvel mistory oil (to coat the cylinder walls) and NOT turn the engine again. i would also remove the spark plugs and install decicant (SP) plugs."

 

Although I suspect, many times, plugs most likely were removed and reused on the replacement engine (or other engines as needed) so why not remove and use them if they have life left in them.. After all, fair chance the problem with the discarded engine wasn't the plugs.

[rocketraider]

ABear has a good point.

 

More likely like my father, who saved the worn-out spark plugs from every engine he ever had "I might need that for the lawnmower some day". Same with worn-out plow points, cultivator points, you name it. There was tons of that worn-out and unusable mess around here that took me days and more than a few truckloads to get rid of it.

 

Granted, he grew up in the Great Depression when nobody had anything and stuff was saved and reused till there was absolutely no use left in it.

 

His sister was worse about it than he was. She would wash and iron used aluminum foil. Even after she was well-off and financially comfortable, she would never let the Depression go. She just knew hard times were coming back tomorrow.

[Peter J.Heizmann]

I retired after 46 years in sales for grey iron foundries.  We normally melted crushed engine blocks plus other innoculants.  Porcelain from spark plugs would contaminate the iron.

 

When a load of scrapped blocks arrive the metallurgist on duty would return the load if spark plugs were present.

[ABear]

35 minutes ago, rocketraider said:

Granted, he grew up in the Great Depression when nobody had anything and stuff was saved and reused till there was absolutely no use left in it.

People now days have forgotten completely or have never heard of The Great Depression of the late 1920's. Both of my parents were born and grew up in that era. It left such an impression on those who lived through those times they never forgot how difficult it was. Absolutely nothing went to waste. I remember my Dad talking about some meals were nothing more than some bread with milk poured on it.. They also saw WW1 and WW2 and several other wars.. WW2 ate up everything, all metals, rubber and food and it was metals or rubber and not deemed essential it was melted down and reused for the war effort..

 

So, the next time you find any auto heap from late 1890s through 1950, be glad it managed to survive all of those years..

[rocketraider]

Peter, that's an interesting concept. 

 

Would aluminum pistons, leftover oils or coolant, things like that, contaminate the recycled iron or did the re-melting process separate such stuff out?

 

And thanks to Jack for posting an interesting question for discussion!😃

[michaelmackay]

5 hours ago, Jack Bennett said:

Working on relic cars, tractors, and other interesting machines is as close to a vocation as I want to be to returning to a paid job.

But, the interludes between being physically involved in the actual nuts and bolts part of maintaining the machine, and the periods of “break time” must be filled too.

Normally, I fill this time by perusing the internet sites such as AACA, Dodge Brothers, Classic Tractor forums and other machinery related clubs for further information on the hobby.

However, there is no substitute for actually looking at old machines, in their rusty glory, and getting really close and personal with them.

In the years I have involved myself with playing with old machines I have noted a common thread which seems to run the time span from antique thru classic to modern engines which are either out, and discarded, or still in a seemingly, otherwise desirable, restorable and collectible machine.

And that thread is the same description of their engines almost always include the death  knell of “locked up” or “frozen”.

Closer investigation may reveal that the distributor and carburetor has been protected by a plastic wrapping, the water drained from the cooling system, and the sump still contains oil.

But, the engine has been left sitting with several, or all of the spark plugs removed, which most certainly was a contributing factor to the engine being seized, and a likely candidate for the junk bin.

My query is WHY????? does it seem to be a normal, and possibly even acceptable, practice for a human being, apparently in possession of the amount of mechanical knowledge it takes to remove a spark plug, and the tools necessary to do it, feel the compulsion to remove the spark plug, and leave a gaping hole in the head of a otherwise completely usable engine.

It tears a hole in my heart when I see this AC repair in Round Rock, and I think a quorum should be taken to ascertain if this is something I, alone, notice, or is this a wider practice, done by a class of people which secretly harbor a compulsion to make sure the engine is never returned to a usable life.

Jack

 

f a spark plug didn't fire would the o2 sensor be lean or rich? All my fact digging and understanding says it would be outputting a lean signal. Just a argument I'm having with a friend.

[ABear]

28 minutes ago, michaelmackay said:

f a spark plug didn't fire would the o2 sensor be lean or rich? All my fact digging and understanding says it would be outputting a lean signal. Just a argument I'm having with a friend.

Your research is dead wrong.

 

O2 sensor will see a overly RICH fuel mixture.

 

See if you can follow the logic..

 

Reason, the cylinder(s) which spark plug doesn't fire will be full of unburnt fuel, that unburnt fuel will be ejected from the cylinder on the exhaust cycle. That unburnt fuel will be detected by the O2 sensor as too rich, which then triggers the computer to attempt to lean out the mix on the next cycle.. But computer has no way to determine which cylinder. The result will be all the other cylinders getting a overly LEAN mix on the bank of that O2 sensor but yet the cylinder(s) that the plug isn't firing will still be ejecting unburnt fuel leading to the O2 sensor still detecting too RICH of a mix.

 

On OBD2 systems, you can monitor fuel trim levels and O2 sensors and if the system is equipped with sensors in banks you can determine which bank the problem is on and narrow the search some.

[Peter J.Heizmann]

2 hours ago, rocketraider said:

Peter, that's an interesting concept. 

 

Would aluminum pistons, leftover oils or coolant, things like that, contaminate the recycled iron or did the re-melting process separate such stuff out?

 

And thanks to Jack for posting an interesting question for discussion!😃

Hey, Glenn.  
 

Aluminum certainly would foul up molten iron.  One soda can would cause a swiss cheese condition when machining a contaminated iron part.  Then the gating of the castings would be melted in subsequent molds and the swiss cheese condition would keep on going.

 

We took out all soda can machines from the employee’s lunch room and then used paper cup machines.

 

In another example we innoculated

pie cut sections of automotive steel

wheels.  We demanded that scrap dealers remove lead wheel balancing

weights due to lead poisoning.  Steel was used at the foundry where we poured ductile iron.  When a periodic health check was performed this foundry division’s lead readings were off the charts.  Sure enough lead weights were found in the scrap piles.

 

Sorry for the long winded high-jacking.

[Pfeil]

6 hours ago, Peter J.Heizmann said:

I retired after 46 years in sales for grey iron foundries.  We normally melted crushed engine blocks plus other innoculants.  Porcelain from spark plugs would contaminate the iron.

 

When a load of scrapped blocks arrive the metallurgist on duty would return the load if spark plugs were present.

Aren't cylinder heads supposed to have spark plugs and not blocks?????????

[wayne sheldon]

7 hours ago, Peter J.Heizmann said:

Sorry for the long winded high-jacking.

 

However, interesting and educational!

 

5 hours ago, Pfeil said:

Aren't cylinder heads supposed to have spark plugs and not blocks?????????

 

Technically correct! Not always, but usually.

 

Jack B, A great question! Something I have noticed all too often myself is engines ruined by being left out too long with spark plugs removed. I have often wondered "why" myself. Generally, I would think that the old spark plugs probably wouldn't have been worth the trouble to remove them. And if someone was like me? They probably already have enough used plugs to not need any more.  

However, one thing that crossed my mind awhile back, was that maybe someone had put new plugs in the struggling tired engine hoping for a miracle cure before they removed the worn out engine. The new plugs couldn't make the nearly dead engine any better so they might pull the nearly new plugs and not bother putting old ones back in.

Just a thought on my part? But for all the times I have seen it, there must be other explanations?

 

 

Edited April 10 by wayne sheldon
I hate leaving typos! (see edit history)

[Jack Bennett]

Wow! Thanks for all the cool replies. Somewhere, around my 50th birthday I sent my brain on a sabbatical, because I felt there was nothing else to learn.

That was changed to a hiatus after I checked this post, and my brain will return to a limited duty status while it digests the worthwhile information found here.

 

[avgwarhawk]

Another factor to consider. An engine is running poorly.  The owners first thought is replacing the plugs and some other ignition items. Engine runs the same. Engine then diagnosed as bad cylinder or similar. New plugs pulled.  Use them later. Ain't bothering replacing with the old. Car left where it sits.  

[Jack Bennett]

I am trying to wrap my mind around how it would feel to park a car, whether running or not, and just walk away from it.

Somehow I can’t visualize it, and, so long as I could not abandon a sick or injured friend, I suppose I will never get to experience the feeling.

I can’t help but wonder if, it doesn’t have something to do with reaching out in anger and striking back at the thing which bothers you the most…..that being yourself.

A first car is the most memorable car. Getting a drivers license and having the ability to roll faster than either your skates or bike ever carried you is a freedom kin to the right of passage experienced when you turned eighteen.

Relationships were consummated, and sometimes dissolved in the back seat of your car, affections affirmed in the front seat of the car and babies made, and divorces finalized in both.

That long black hearse is a final ride in a car and the trip home from a nights drunk at the local bar may be the most expensive, and life changing ride you’ll ever take in a car.

A popular, and newly aired TV program named “Road Wars” exploits our inborn tendency to direct our anger at a inanimate object, may it be toward a lover caught in a act of infidelity or a neighbor who fails to control their dog. In all too many cases it appears that a car is the most readily available target.

For the same reason I could never condemn a perfectly good engine to death by.a thousand rain drops, that being the way I look at it as a source of pleasure, maybe it is easier to understand my I would take my anger out on it if I felt the same emotion, only in reverse.

Or, maybe as hypothesized, I am just forgetful, left the spark plugs out, and for whatever reason, never returned to put them back in.

Or, as is the case within my neighborhood at this moment, the druggies who live down the street, and will steal anything in sight to buy another fix, stole them in a drug induced haze thinking they could be resold on eBay or Amazon to a old car buff as “antiques” or “collectibles”.

And, before you laught at this last hypothesis, think of Mike and the gang on American Pickers…..”Gee…..these may look like plain old spark plugs to a normal person, but I can remember my much cherished, and long departed Grandpa putting them lovingly into the engine of his old Stutzmobile, and taking Grandma for the ride on which he proposed……..and I value them a $1000.00 apiece”.

Jack

Edited April 10 by Jack Bennett (see edit history)

[Pfeil]

12 hours ago, wayne sheldon said:

 

 

 

 

Technically correct! Not always, but usually.

 

 

 

 

Example please!

[Grimy]

8 minutes ago, Pfeil said:

Example please!

Engines pre-1920 that do not have detachable heads.

[Jack Bennett]

21 hours ago, Peter J.Heizmann said:

I retired after 46 years in sales for grey iron foundries.  We normally melted crushed engine blocks plus other innoculants.  Porcelain from spark plugs would contaminate the iron.

 

When a load of scrapped blocks arrive the metallurgist on duty would return the load if spark plugs were present.

That has leaked over into the modern way of thinking.

The drivers of the trucks which collects our trash and recyclables are told to refuse collection of the contents of any plastic recycling bins if they contain the vinyl plastic shopping bags or wrapping materials….it supposedly does the same damage to their shredders/grinders as flushing a “flushable wipe” does to the sewer processing equipment. Pity the poor soul who put a glass bottle in his/her trash bin. Yep, the whole bin will remain uncollected, and I’ll bet there is a a penalty to be assessed from the offender.

Let’s not wander into the oil, paint or other contaminants which may be included in the household trash by a uninformed individual.

Jack

[Jack Bennett]

11 minutes ago, Grimy said:

Engines pre-1920 that do not have detachable heads.

May I postulate that you never need to change the spark plugs in either a diesel or steam engine.

And, may I add that my buttocks may not be directly attached to my brain, but a brain pain may result in a pain in the buttocks because of the plumbing scheme of either or both.

Jack

[Jack Bennett]

8 minutes ago, Jack Bennett said:

That has leaked over into the modern way of thinking.

The drivers of the trucks which collects our trash and recyclables are told to refuse collection of the contents of any plastic recycling bins if they contain the vinyl plastic shopping bags or wrapping materials….it supposedly does the same damage to their shredders/grinders as flushing a “flushable wipe” does to the sewer processing equipment. Pity the poor soul who put a glass bottle in his/her trash bin. Yep, the whole bin will remain uncollected, and I’ll bet there is a a penalty to be assessed from the offender.

Let’s not wander into the oil, paint or other contaminants which may be included in the household trash by a uninformed individual.

Jack

My understanding is that the Spaniards had exactly the same problem with the tons of Inca gold they collected.

[Jack Bennett]

6 hours ago, avgwarhawk said:

Another factor to consider. An engine is running poorly.  The owners first thought is replacing the plugs and some other ignition items. Engine runs the same. Engine then diagnosed as bad cylinder or similar. New plugs pulled.  Use them later. Ain't bothering replacing with the old. Car left where it sits.  

At the junk yard, looking for some seat springs for my Fargo Express panel, I sight this old Plymouth hulk. I think it was of mid-1930’s vintage, but you’ll have to decide yourself after looking at my post in the “What is it” thread on this forum.

Anyway, since I cried tears of blood over finding a engine replacement for the truck, you can imagine the intense amount of pleasure I felt in finding the Dodge 218 CI, flathead engine, which I thought would fit the truck.

Albeit, after driving to Oregon to buy the engine, and finding out it was much shorter than the original engine, I still managed to take a bunch of broken eggs and make a fairly nice omelet.

Now, put yourself in a position to look over my shoulder as I view a identical engine, in a junk yard only a few miles from my home, and feel the intense love which radiates from my shoulders as I imagine this engine in the truck.

Careful though because, if you can feel the heat of my passion as I  visualize the engine detailed and running, you may also sense the frigid cold emanating from my “Awwwwww Crap” gland when I notice that grass is sprouting from each of the (left open) spark plug holes.

This is the signal to back off because the experience of finding 50 years of debris, collected in the destroyed bores of the engine I just replaced, forewarns me that pulling the head on this engine will reveal the same gory mess I just dealt with in the other engine.

At this point I would expect you to show respect by looking away as a eighty year old guy broke out in tears and screams anguish.

Jack

[TheMoneyPit]

Maybe just my experience, but an engine is running poorly, pulling the plugs and doing a compression test you find it’s bad, then you go to the junkyard and pick up a running one for half what boring and piston replacement would cost… out goes the old engine without plugs. 
 

In the case of engines in cars, it could be from the time when used cars were cheap? I remember junking a Pinto with no compression and replacing it with a rusty but running 1965 Mustang  for $75 and the scrap pinto. That pony gave me 3 years before it wouldn’t pass inspection…

[Pfeil]

8 hours ago, Grimy said:

Engines pre-1920 that do not have detachable heads.

Quite right they have detachable cylinder barrels with head from the engine block. Like many aircraft engines especially radials.

[60FlatTop]

 

I spent some early post Navy days at Genecast Foundry, a part of General Railway Signal.

 

We crushed engine blocks in a 1,000 ton table press when a load came in.

 

The pieces would go into the furnace, cast and forged all together. We contracted a lot of jobs beyond the signal boxes. At one time we were pouring International truck axles.

That was early 1970s and each batch was monitored closely.

 

That big press had a lot of power for a 22 year old to experiment with. I worked as a repair millright and squashed a couple of steel Wheel A Brator shafts set on Vee blocks trying to get a bow out of them. Ahh, the inquisitive mind of youth.

[Pfeil]

On 4/9/2024 at 9:27 PM, wayne sheldon said:

 

However, interesting and educational!

 

 

Technically correct! Not always, but usually.

 

Jack B, A great question! Something I have noticed all too often myself is engines ruined by being left out too long with spark plugs removed. I have often wondered "why" myself. Generally, I would think that the old spark plugs probably wouldn't have been worth the trouble to remove them. And if someone was like me? They probably already have enough used plugs to not need any more.  

However, one thing that crossed my mind awhile back, was that maybe someone had put new plugs in the struggling tired engine hoping for a miracle cure before they removed the worn out engine. The new plugs couldn't make the nearly dead engine any better so they might pull the nearly new plugs and not bother putting old ones back in.

Just a thought on my part? But for all the times I have seen it, there must be other explanations?

 

 

You still haven't given an example.

[erichill]

Good question. Probably just to make our lives miserable. It either that or squirrels.

[wayne sheldon]

Grimy gave the most obvious and common answer. (Thank you G!)

Beyond that, there were a few oddities out there. I wish I could recall what it was? It was years ago. I was visiting a friend's shop that had a wonderful collection of antique automobiles, and they were working on some unusual car. I can't remember what it was. But what caught my attention was the odd setup in that the cylinders were deep, with so-called "L" head side valves down-set on the side of the block. The surface of the removeable head was almost perfectly flat, but did of course have a water jacket above. The piston travel did not go to the top of the cylinder, couldn't, not with the valves on one side set about an inch below the top. The combustion zone was all in the cylinder and over the valves, not recessed in the head. What caught my attention was poking in from the side, just above the top of the piston travel, was the business end of the spark plug. The plug would need to be removed, or at least backed partway back to pull the piston out the top (which if I recall correctly they were just working on the valves and not needing to pull the pistons out?).

 

I have seen several other antique automobiles that had deeper cylinders that the piston did not travel clear to the top, and had flat surface heads. Studebaker standard sixes of the 1920s and four cylinder Chevrolets with overhead valves in the 1920s immediately come to mind. However both of those still had the spark plugs in the head, not in the block.

 

I meant to include a final comment, that there were a lot of unusual automobiles throughout the history of the automobile! And oddities are out there. I have a clear image in my head of that one engine, sitting there, head off, and the end of the spark plug poking in from the outside. I would imagine there must have been others?

 

 

Edited April 11 by wayne sheldon
Additional thought. (see edit history)