could u just explain what pinking is please.

are there any decent roolin roads in coventry or nearby?

I would be taking the head off anyway just incase. if there is a loose bit bouncing round than it could easily jam under a valve and cause serious problems.

if you want a proper diagnosis get it to a rolling road so they can check for pinking / detonation and check the a/f ratio using a wideband lambda.

well ive put new plugs in for now and the car is running fine. so i dont think theres any bits in the head.

even if i did tae the head off, and everything seemed fine. what would my next step be?

A plug melted on my old nova. Turned out it broke a piece off a valve when a piece of the plug got jammed in it.

Get the head off

destroyed plugs is usually running lean rather than rich. the engine will run a lot hotter running lean.

I would say its worthwile taking the head off to see if any other damage has been caused by all the bits flying round the combustion chamber.

hmmm... i would get the plugs out and look down the hole to c the condition of the pistons. ive seen where melted plugs have burnt through pistons before

its a astra mk3 x14xe


it happened about a motnh ago, then i put these bosch super 4 plugs in, after a month it started misfiring again, i took the plugs out this morning and foud them destroyed (2 of them)

so i bought some new plugs this morn and they misfiring had gone, obviously

What engine and car
What plug model and make

in the first two pics can you see how the white centre and electrode have been totally melted. melted into the plug about 4mm down

apologies about quality of pic. couldntfind my camera so used my fone instead.

first 2 pics show the most damaged one
2nd two pics show the one

pics of the plugs......

anyone of you techie guys have an idea?

basically cutting a long story short, this is whats happened to my spark plugs.

car was running rough and misfiring in the low rev range

gave the car a service, changed plugs etc and the problem dissaeared.

the other day the car started running rough again. took plugs out, which were new one month ago. and 2 of them were destroyed. unsure of which cylinders, but most likely 1 and 4

the inside of the spark plugs were melted. 2 of them were fine however.

im guessing this has been caused by over fuelling, which would also explain my poor fuel consumption.

anyone got any other ideas?