The plugs not being tightened enough would cause that? I'm sure they're in there, but not rattling around.
If you DID switch wires around, yes you would screw up the firing order and SERIOUSLY risk damaging your engine. Maybe even blowing it or causing injury to yourself. Think about it, the charge going to the wrong spark plug. Let's just say a spark plug in a cylinder with the intake valve open and fuel being injected. Fuel ignites in the combustion chamber, out into the port and intake.........yeah that could be VERY ugly. And if it didn't blow the intake off the first time, think about that happening dozens of times a minute......
I just finished changing my plugs today. Went with Copper Autolite 764's. I had some problems getting them out smoothly because there was some "sand" in the wells! What's up with that. I tried to use a can of air and blow some out with the plug still in there. But when I looked at the threads on the old plugs they had some grit and sand on them. Is theis bad? How bad? How can I fix it? I heard about something called a thread chaser? Would that work? What if some sand gets into a cylinder? an I screwed? I didn't use thread sealer last time (Didn't know) could this cause the problem?
It should most likely be cleaned out, but I'd be kind of worried about it going into the cylinder. Is this really like SAND or something? Something hard that could scratch the cylinder?
thats why you clean around it before even removing the plugs.
but yeah, when 2-3 of my plugs werent torqued to spec, air was bypassing them, sometimes even pushing the boots off and i was loosing all compression. and put some anti-seize on those threads. not sure how to get the sand out, maybe a q-tip taped to a popsicle stick?
a thread chaser is going to basically "smooth" the threads and remove deposits, but it's only going to work by screwing it into the hole, but that would push the grit into the cylinder.
could be an air leak as stated above. If you're loosing metered air, or gaining un-metered air (by the MAF) your tune will be screwed up. DO NOT OVERTIGHTEN YOUR PLUGS ! The factory heades have soft, shallow threads. They'll strip pretty easily. Then it's possible new head time