Ok, wife's idle on MCS 2011 has had a fluctuating idle for a few weeks, on way to dealership for oil change ses came on , showed #4 misfire, dealership said insulator "dropped" , so I'm assuming it went through engine and turbo. I called dealership to get confirmation because I feel they need to inspect heads ,cylinder wall and turbo.

Anyone else ever hear of this ? Car has 36k and under warranty.

 

I don't think that they meant that the whole insulator dropped and went into the engine. I imagine they meant that it failed or cracked. You'd know if the insulator went into the engine.

At least let's hope so.

 

Were they talking about the ceramic part? They'd have to fish that out to get a socket on the plug before they could remove the plug I should think.

 

Waiting for them to call me back. But they said dropped

 

Apparently a common thing and seems to be #4 all the time.

 

See it a lot on due to spark knock out here. Detonation kills spark plugs before it kills pistons.

 

Care to elaborate ? Spark knock ? It gets hot here too in TX, always run 93 octane.

 

spark knock is pinging or detonation.

Caused by many things but typically caused by too much timing at a given moment. The given moment could be caused by excessive engine temp, high intake air temp, poor fuel quality, too much boost or simply the car trying to test how far it can go for the first time and going too far. These cars are extremely adaptive and change fuel and timing curves on daily basis to get the most power possible. Some times they over shoot the last known good point to see if it can add timing and you will get a pinging that you hear. Then it goes away since it sees said pinging and pulls timing.

Some of the Manic tunes we did pinged for the first few pulls but the car finds it happy spot and it goes away. Those cars were also flashed in the summer when it was extremely hot outside so it pulled some timing until it was good. Now that it is a little cooler I am sure the car is slowly adding the timing back.

 

I had the same issue on my 2008 at about 55,000 miles.
Changed the plugs and found the insulator had dropped.
Now at just over 105,000 miles - think I'm due to change the plugs again but the car is still running great.