UltimX

A friend of mine was removing a sparkplug and noticed it was unusually tight. So when he finally got it out it, the plug was rusted and had some threads :shock: (about 3, on one side of the plug, one thread, and on the opposite side, 2) removed along with it. Is there any solution to fixing this? Has anyone experienced this? What did you do if you experienced this? I wanna help him out and want to find out as much as possible to fixing this as I am going to ask other people for their options aswell. Thanks for your help guys

Ulti~

hondatech

You could try out a tool that you insert into the spark plug hole , it expands and you remove the tool counter clockwise and it will chase the original threads. This tool works good because the shavings are removed with the tool backwards and leaves no shavings in the internals of the engine (which is bad).It might work enough to keep from making major repairs. Otherwise you will need to drill out the hole and heli-coil it, which is a lot of work and will require the head to be pulled off. that tool is really cheap at Napa auto parts but I've seen it at other places too.

UltimX

What does it look like? And also, if I do have to heli-coil it, won't that make the sparkplug hole bigger and me having to use a different spark plug? The threads don't look to bad but I can't see it really well. Let me know. Thanks

hondatech

The tool that rethreads threads from napa looks like a sleeve with a bolt head on the back and a split thread on the front. it collapses sort of then you put it in the hold. You twist the bolt head on the back and it spreads to the plug size and then you back it out slow with the bolt head. It's at napa in thier tool catalog. I think you might find it online if you searched.

If you heli-coil it, you drill it slightly bigger, then you tap the hole slightly bigger, then the "heli-coil" is inserted into the new thread you made with the tap. However the "heli-coil" is the same thread size as your old plug so no you use the same plugs.
Do a search on heli-coil if you still don't get it. You kinda almost have to do it to understand how it works.

Redlinerz

i would say either 1) take it to a machine shop or 2) get the tool hondatech is referring to if you are handy man

UltimX

Yeah i know. I might go first with the tool, then the shop. I don't know yet. I want to see what other options are.

Is it called a Chaser? And does it look like this? or this?

hondatech

No those pictures are not what I'm talking about. Those have been around forever and work fine if the cylinder head is off already. I'm assuming you want the easy fix and you don't want to take the head off. I did so looking around and snap-on has it too. I know NAPA has it in their catalog cause I bought mine there. Anyways, it's called a back-tap metric thread restorer. I've been around a long time this is your best option.
Here's the link:


http://buy1.snapon.com/catalog/pro_d...re&dir=catalog

I used mine on an old chain saw I found on a curb someone threw out. It was decent looking so I took it to the shop and tried to run a compresson check. The spark plug fell out on the first turn on the socket. I seen the threads and knew right away why they threw it away. I used my thread restorer and cleaned up the old plug and it went in fine and sealed fine. I primed the thing and it fired right up. I'm sort of a junk anything with an engine collector.

UltimX

Wow! 65 plus shipping?! All this for a little tool? Hrmm, do you think shops do the exact same thing? or do they actually helicoil it? we are am probably not going to do much more/see much more of this so i'm thinking if it would be worth it to buy. I'll look on the napa catalog online and see. Thanks man.

hondatech

Ha ha, i don't even pay attention to price anymore. It's part of the deal. I think Napa's tool is 45 bucks though if your hurting for money. You sounded like my G/F, "what you payed 400 dollars for a so and so!?" I think my current rolling value of tools is around 50k. That's why I don't have an S2K like I want....

UltimX

When your short on funds for numerious reasons, money tends to be an issue. I'm not sure about you and your 50k tool set that you can just throw money at, but not having money does suck. Hey, why don't you let me barrow it? i'll send it back, promise