Last Saturday I saw my neighbor changing spark plugs on his truck. About a
half an hour later he was knocking on my door. He handed me the insulator
from a broken spark plug and said, "What do I do now coach?"
When I looked at it closer I saw that it was not just the insulator, the
steel hex portion of the plug was still attached to the insulator. The steel
hex had snapped off of the threaded portion.
I went over an looked to confirm what I saw. Fortunately, it wasn't one of
the plugs at the back of the engine and I could actually see into the
recess......my worst suspicions were confirmed. There was the remains of the
broken insulator sticking out of the threaded portion which had not even
started to unthread. I suggested that he might try carefully breaking up the
remaining parts of the insulator and then getting a left handed drill bit
quite a bit larger than the hole through the threaded portion and hope that
it would "bite" into the plug and back it out. However, as we discussed it,
we decided that the chances were slim that you could do these two steps
necessary without getting significant trash into the cylinder. I finally
came to the conclusion that I couldn't think of a safe way short of pulling
the head. He decided that the problem was beyond his abilities and later
that day I saw the tow truck picking up his truck....
Has anybody out there ever had this happen to them? How did you solve the
problem?
If I get a big no, does anybody have any creative ideas?
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