Glow Plugs

[MEP]

Has anyone heard of glow plugs seizing in the heads on older D-max's due to corrosion? A friend of mine who is a truck sales manager told me about this. He had been told by a tech that it is a problem starting to show up at their dealership in New England.

Having a 2001 D-Max with 131,000 miles, I decided to take a chance and carefully pull my glow plugs and "Never-Seeze" the threads. I was succesful with 7 plugs but the #8 cyl plug I left in because the 8 mm nut that holds the wire on was rusted and I would have damaged the plug removing it (just like I did on the #6 cyl plug!). So my other question is should I replace just the 2 glow plugs or replace all eight because of their age and milage? The truck starts fine and the other 6 plugs measure .5-.7 ohms on the bench.

[DmaxMaverick]

The anti-seize is a good idea. That's what I did to all of them some time ago. I don't suggest replacing all the GP's due to age. There's no indication of the lifespan of them, and new plugs, right out of the box can fail as quickly as the original plugs. I've replaced two failed plugs on my 2001 (with OEM plugs), and I have one failed now. The one that is currently failed, is one of the plugs I replaced a couple years ago. 6 of the original 8 are still fine.

GP's are cheap, compared to a repair for a seized (or twisted off) plug. I suggest you do what must to prevent the corrosion. Corrosion, under these conditions (aluminum head, steel plug) is expected w/o some precaution. Once the plating on the plug starts to break down, corrosion is inevitable.