last night we were fiddling with my megasquirt and when we got that done we tried to start my car. we wound up flooding it out so i changed the leading plugs with some clean dry ones and when i went to tighten up the rear it felt like it just stripped. i just started to get tight and i felt the cracking and i think it went lose. i only turned it 1/4 turn maybe and my stomach dropped. i took the plug out and there werent any shavings on it but with such a fine thread i bet they are in the threads or in the motor now. i put it back in just over hand tight and now i am hoping that will be ok. any ways to check to see if its stripped without just cranking on the sparkplug and seeing if it tightens up or not? and if its stripped is there any way to fix it with the motor still in the car? oh man this sucks. its worse than a blown motor by like a million.

 

nope id say youd have to crack the motor open if there is any metal in there cuz ur going to have t tap it or worse buy a new housing. id check with a flash light first to just make sure. thats all i got unless someone has something better

 

ALM is soft......you might get lucky without any housing damage, that is if you can HELICOIL the threads well enough to hold the plug.

 

the car idled for almost an hour after this happened so i dont think there is much if any damage in the motor its self, just worried about the threads. i was thinking of using helicoil but ive never used it and dont know where to get it. the plug is in and it runs but its just over hand tight and i think that it will walk out eventually. man this sucks

 

you might try just a little copper atv on the threads...tighten up and let dry for a day.worst that can happen is it will spit it out,then you know you're screwed,Just saw a rotor housing on e-bay tho...........helicoils are pretty easy to use and available at any auto parts store,you just tap the hole a size bigger and then screw em in...still easier than a housing replacement!

 

i would never do this, but to avoid taking the motor out, since it would be better than you have it now...Teflon tape?

 

i have never seen a spark plug thread strip out in a rotor housing yet so i'm thinking you felt some grit in the threads holding up the plug.

you're better off finding out for real, putting in the plugs just over finger tight is not good, plugs tend to back out on these motors so i doubt it will stay put with that little torque on it.

 

thats why you always use anti-sieze when doing plugs

 

FWIW a helicoil held on for 5 full passes@ around 170 mph till we tore the motor down, Blown alky SBC with over 1200 HP to the wheels. We leaned out a cylinder when an injector failed= torched off the plug and the threads. The spark plug hole looked like it was hit up with a torch........very ugly, but we were in the middle of a drag so of to autobone for a Helicoil, it saved us that day!

 

i hope that it isnt stripped. i have plenty of housings laying around that i can replace it with. im just tired of tearing motors apart. so karack you are saying to just try to tighten it up and see if it pulls the threads out? i was thinking that it had way too many threads to strip that easily but im so afraid of aluminum. i guess ill try it and let you guys know.

 

if you say so.

 

drum roll please.....................................

hurry up and let us know if we need to give you a hug or not.

 

haha it wont be till later. you will have results tomorrow at the latest!

 

Yea.. if its stripped, go to autozone and buy the heli-coil kits they have there.

 

ok so i went to the shop cause this was bugging the hell out of me. i turned it like half of one more turn and it went way easy and i saw the plug wobble. i took the socket off and pulled on the plug and it just came out... BUT! it wasnt stripped, the plug broke away from the threaded part some how. so i have the nut and the internals but the threads are in the housing. i think i can just take an easy out and walk it out since its not very tight in there but its as much as a pain as it is a relief

 

next time let the engine cool down bcs metal expands when it gets hot and then u wont have that problem again

 

well.. the engine wasnt hot when i swapped the plugs out. we flooded it before we got it to start and i didnt crank on it at all so i am not sure what happened but i can handle broken, i cant handle stripped

 

No offense Karak, but I think it is just plain stupid to not use anti-seize on spark plugs. It is super cheap and takes an extra 15 seconds. Sure it might not alsways be neccesary, but it can save major headaches. On the motor I pulled from my parts car one fo the plugs was so stuck I actually broke a spark plug socket trying to get it out. I ended up having to put on a breaker bad and jump on it to get the damn plug out, its a miracle there wasn't any galling.
So to sum up, use anti seize, its cheap insurance.

 

and this motor sat for how long?

i don't use anti sieze because it tends to gunk up the threads worse than they originally were. what i do is if the threads are dirty and sticking i drench a crap plug with MMO and run it in and out a few times and then crank the motor over to blow out the now clean threads. never had a single problem with frozen spark plugs, ever, not in 15 years of daily wrenching. works like a charm for even plug threads that were grabbing the plugs that had anti sieze on them..

after a few hundred miles anti sieze turns to an aluminum powder anyways, what real benefit does it have on an aluminum rotor housing? as far as i see it only makes it more difficult to install and remove the plugs and that is what i have experienced as well.

only place i see it as a benefit on is on steel fasteners such as exhaust nuts, they tend to sieze up quite often on these engines and aluminum is softer than the steel it is bonding to.

to each their own but i really doubt i'm stupid for not wanting to 'protect' my work by putting free floating aluminum on an aluminum surface, the combustion cycles lube the threads with engine oil anyways.

 

Hmmm... Karack FTW.

 

i just cant believe NOONE sugeested geting a small magnet antenna thingy from AutoZone and fishing for any shavings b4 you started it again lol

i have lost alot of confidence in some ppl here :-(

 

rotor housings are aluminum, tell me what good a magnet would do?

i already knew the rotor housing wasn't stripped anyways but eh, whateva!

when you strip aluminum the threads come out on the bolt 95% of the time and it is quite obvious what happened, unless you cross thread a bolt then it is also quite obvious what happened.

 

err...fishing for ALLUMINUM fragments with a magnet?

*EDIT hehe...karack beat me to it...

 

haha i had a magnetic antenna thing but yeah alum it doesnt work. so i got the broken sparkplug piece out. didnt have to use an easy out or anything. i was thinking about it and our plugs are unique in the design of the top. if you think about it, it looks like a phillips screw. so i got the biggest flathead screwdriver that would fit in the sparkplug piece and unscrewed it. it worked like a charm. still dont know how i broke the plug but the important thing is that its not stripped and it is now in no way messed up. lose confidence in me if you want but i think i handled a potentially horrible problem pretty successfully... thanks guys

 

I know this is just throwing gas on the fire...hehe..
ask any professional mechanic...anti-seeze on plugs, dialectric grease on boots, every time.When you work on the same car for years you might not see it's benefit. But when you do it for a living, and the customers cars you work on come back year after year, trust me, use anti-seeze. If not for your benefit, do it for the guy who works on the car (me) later on in life.// just my .02


-Dave.