Under the Hood

I almost paid the dealer $1,050 to change six spark plugs.

If you've ever owned an FJ Cruiser past a hundred and forty thousand miles, you already know the one job that makes a grown man set his coffee down and just stare at the engine. It isn't the water pump. It isn't the timing. It's six spark plugs. And it's the reason a dealer can look you in the eye and quote you fifteen hundred dollars for parts that cost sixty-six. I'm Glenn. The FJ in my garage is a 2013 with a hundred and fifty thousand miles on it, and I've done almost every one of those miles myself. I'm no mechanic. I spent thirty years running land surveys up and down the Cascades, and that truck is how I got to half the ridgelines in central Oregon. It's paid off. It starts at nine degrees. My wife Carol quit asking when I'd replace it about sixty thousand miles ago. I keep it running because keeping it running is the whole point. Here's what nobody tells you about the 4.0. Three plugs a side. The passenger side you can reach. The driver's side you cannot, because Toyota ran a metal support bracket straight across it. Two 12mm bolts hold that bracket on, and until it comes off you're not getting at the middle plug. The bottom bolt is the one that ruins your Saturday. It sits down where your hand goes in and your knuckles come out bleeding. Last fall I picked up a stumble on the climb out of Sisters, a little buck under load that turned into a check-engine light by the time I got home. Code said cylinder five misfire. I knew what it was. Plugs were past due at a hundred fifty. I'd been quietly putting off the driver's side since the day I bought the truck. So I started in on it on a Saturday. Passenger side went in under an hour, three plugs, no trouble. Then I went around to the driver's side. Hoses moved aside, coils loose, and there sat that bracket. I could see the bottom bolt. I could touch it with one finger. I could not get a tool on it and turn it. A swivel socket on two extensions flexed under load and walked off the head. A stubby ratchet fit in there and gave me maybe five degrees of swing, and five degrees is nothing on a bolt that's been in since the factory. A universal joint gave me the angle and then twisted off the head every time I leaned on it. A long extension put the ratchet out where I could hold it and put the socket on the bolt crooked. An hour in I had three plugs done, three to go, a knuckle wrapped in a shop rag and a bracket bolt that hadn't moved. I sat down on the garage stool and listened to the whole noon hour on the radio without moving. Monday I called the Toyota dealer in Bend. The service writer told me the driver's side was where the labor went, pulling brackets and hoses to get a socket onto three plugs. Fifteen hundred dollars for six spark plugs. He said it the way you'd read off a weather report. I asked him if he meant fourteen ninety-nine. He did not. I told Carol at supper. She put her fork down and said, "Fifteen hundred dollars to change spark plugs. No. They're making it harder than it is." She was right. They were. A few weeks later I drove out to the big FJ meet they hold every summer, the one where two hundred people park with their hoods up and spend the afternoon under each other's engines drinking gas-station coffee. Three trucks down from me a fellow about seventy had a 2010 with two hundred and sixty thousand on it and a tool chest in the back. We got to talking about the misfire. I said the bracket on the driver's side. He said, "Bottom bolt?" and I didn't have to say anything else. He listened to the whole thing, the swivel, the extensions, the dealer quote, all of it. Then he said, "You ever use a chain bar?" I told him I didn't know what that was. He reached into the chest and handed me a flat blue bar about the length of my forearm. Told me to press my thumb on the end. Something turned inside it. Not a wobble, not a hinge. A chain, sealed in the bar. "The chain carries the turn around the corner," he said. "It stays dead square on the bolt, so it can't rock and round it. You've been trying to fit the socket and your hand in the same place. Socket goes where there's no room. Ratchet stays where there is. The only reason that side is a dealer job is there's no room to swing a ratchet at that bracket. Nothing to do with the plugs. It's the room." He walked over to my FJ, slid the bar down past the hoses into the gap where my hand wouldn't fit, set the socket on that bottom bracket bolt, put a ratchet on the end where there was room, and handed it to me. "Your truck. You pull it." It seated flat and broke loose on the first pull. No walk. No rounding. Bracket off, coils out, and I did the last three that afternoon in the field, gapped and torqued, nothing left scraped but my knuckles from the week before. He told me to order it from the people who make it, not off Amazon, where they sell bars that look the same but have a universal joint inside instead of a chain. Without the chain it just flexes, same as the two hundred dollars of tools already in my drawer. The maker sells from their own site, wildbeartools.com. Eighty-nine dollars. Eighty-nine dollars and sixty-six in plugs against fifteen hundred at the dealer. It paid for itself before I left the field. But that's not really why it stays on my bench. It stays there because a man who's done a hundred and fifty thousand miles of his own work shouldn't have to hand his truck to a stranger over one bracket bolt he can see with a flashlight. I've used it a couple dozen times since. Accessory bracket bolts. Skid plate and crossmember bolts. Anywhere I can get a socket onto the bolt but can't get a ratchet in behind it. It lives on top of the chest now, where I can reach it. If you run a 4.0 in an FJ Cruiser, a 4Runner, or a Tacoma, you already know the side I'm talking about. The driver's side. The bracket. You don't have to pay a dealer fifteen hundred dollars just because you can't get a ratchet in there. The maker sells direct from their own site, not Amazon, not the dealer. The knockoffs look the same. They don't have the chain. They don't work. https://wildbeartools.com/products/extension-wrench