For the past couple of days I have had an unusual tap/knock from the engine when started cold. Not the usual piston slap. Opened the hood and it was clearly coming from the passenger side of the engine area. After the engine warmed up the noise would go away. Truck still ran fine. today i decided to check a couple of things, so I pulled off the Whipple so I could yank off the pass side valve cover. Everything looked good. So I decided to pull the plugs,o ****!!!, not good. Second plug from the front is messed up pretty good. Not sure if somthing beat it up or if it had a melt down. Looks like it is melted, but that could have happened after somthing hit it and broke it off.
I'm going to put in some new plugs and hope for the best. wish me luck.

 

The plug looks melted to me. it doesnt look like it broke, jsut melted. best of luck with the new plugs and let us know how it goes.

 

That happened to me about 6 months ago and I never did figure out what was doing it.....all of my plugs on the passenger side were beat to hell and nothing out of the ordinary seemed to have caused it

 

ya dude you just melted the plug. get use to it. the best thing for you would be to get a EGT monitor if your going to stick to N2O.

 

Oh ****, same exact scenario here... Guess I'll be checking those tomorrow morning. Darn N2O.

Could improper plug gapping result in this?

 

No nitrous here though. Maybe just a problem with not having an intercooler?
If I am lucky and nothing is hurt I will be checking the plugs on a regular basis.

 

maybe a colder (shorter) sparkplug would help??

 

Yeah...that looks like a bad case of Spark knock to me...I would go a step colder on the plugs or gap the new ones a bit closer...

 

I agree, detonation can do that. If that cylinder is lean it can do that too. Now the question is, why just the one? Which piston did that come from? Something going on there.
I would suggest, at minimum, move some injectors around on that side of the engine to see if you've got a lame one.

 

Update---I changed the plugs this morning and fired it up. No abnormal sounds from the engine, sounds fine. I will not be celebrating too soon though. Time will tell, and I will be checking the plugs soon after I drive it a litte. The tr6's that were in it were the original ones I had in it when the engine was built. Only had 5300 miles on them, but they have been run on 2 different tunes, 2 different size Whipple pullies and I also drove around for about a week only making 2 pounds of boost running pig rich because I had a problem with the bypass valve not closing fully. did any of that cause this? with my luck, no it didnt. I have my fingers crossed that all is good now.