I'm changing the plugs on my 2001 rodeo (3.2 V6) and the number 6 boot is hopelessly stuck. I have spent 3 hours with wd40, pliers,screwdrivers and pretty much anything i could find to shove in there - twisting, pulling, gouging etc. I have torn the boot in several places, and I'm running out of pieces to grab onto. This thing simply will not come out. Any ideas?


P.S. I've seen a couple other posts with people having trouble with the #6 fpr some reason, and YES you CAN buy just the boot. I found it at O'Reilly (sp?) for $6. They had to order it though, which will take 2 days.

 

I normally use compressed air blown down the center of the boot. It is sometimes hard to get a good seal on #6 but if you can get a seal with the air it will blow it loose. Good luck

 

I've heard of doing it the same way. Along with spraying lots of penetrating oil down the center using the little straw on the can to get it all the way in.

One word of warning about the replacement boots. There is a spring in the factory boots to carry the spark from the coil pack to the spark plug. The replacement ones dont come with that spring so you will need to reuse it. At least the ones available from auto zone dont have them.

 

Thanks for the ideas. I tried these. At first the compressed air seemed to help, the boot started to push out of the hole, but it still wouldn't come out.


In the end, here's how I got it out. This is probably not recommended by Isuzu, but it worked. I took a pair of pliers and yanked the spring out of the middle of the boot (the replacement boot came with one). Next, I took a drywall saw and worked it into the hole, all the way down to the handle. It was a tight fit, but that's what I wanted. Then I worked it back and forth, sawing into the boot until it got deep enough into the rubber that it was stuck tightly in the boot. ThenI just pulled the handle and the boot came out very easily.


After all of this, I was sure to apply some silicone grease to the new boot to hopefully avoid this next time around.


Cheers [img]smileys/smiley2.gif[/img]