Well...this ain't good

Blew a plug out of my Harley in North Platte Nebraska. Went to Harley dealer and got song and dance about disassembling machine shop etc. I asked who the machine shop was? Got the plug tightened enough to get there and and like a half hour and 50 dollars I was on the road again. Maybe it was less than 50 but it was not much time. We greased the tap for the helicoil to not let any chips fall. Ran quite a few miles on that.
Electrolysis between the steel plug and aluminum causes the threads to strip when you remove the plug if you do not use anti seize.
 
cmbrucew said:
Has anyone drilled and retapped 18 MM for the larger plug thread? Forget the heli coil etc.
Bruce
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Had a set that were done that way and then they too got the threads pulled out (rough life) fixed them by welding the holes up, spot faced them in the mill then redrilled them back to 14mm. Old heads are not the easiest thing to weld (most of the time)

Really the easiest and best way is the keysert, much better then a helicoil
 
Some of the early 4.6s had a sparkplug issue. I have put inserts in several of them with the engine in place. Fairly simple to do and great results.
 
I had one blow out right past my left ear and up to the hood of the car, leaving a dent. Also got two of my fingers with aluminum shards. Scared the crap out of me.

Heli-coil makes a time-sert style insert that does a good, easy, clean repair.
 
Heard said:
Just be glad he didn't show you the interior! Definitely a work in progress. :eek:
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Nah, I wouldn't pull that one un-announced. Certainly nothing to be ashamed of, though. Yup, it's spartan, it's clean and tidy, has some interesting features, it's shiny in most of the right places, but most-importantly it has a business-like yet "manly" feel about it! DD
 
The ‘36 has an 8RT in it?
I have done maybe a dozen spark plug hole fixes in the past years with my KD kit. Also a few Honda oil drains.
About thirty or more years ago a guy from Yugoslavia had me do a spark plug hole on a six cylinder BMW. Maybe was a 530i or Bavaria.
When the plug blew out he stripped a length of fine stranded copper wire and cut one strand out of it and wrapped it around the spark plug in the threads, or what was left of them, and screwed the plug back in. I was amazed and he told me back home (in Yugoslavia) people mostly worked on their own cars and messed up a lot of spark plug holes and that was a very common repair there for cars and motorbikes.

When you tap the threads you should stop and remove the tap a few times, clean it off an d recoat it with chassis grease to keep the shavings from falling into the cylinder.
When you finish tapping start the engine with the plug out and let it run a few seconds to blow the shavings out. Aluminum shavings won’t do damage if some fall in and stay. They melt right away.
The KD kit should be available in any good parts store.
I get my TIME SERT kits from the Thread kit store in Carson, CA.
I
 
Thread Kits Company
Threadkits.com
310-891-1995 they’re in Carson,CA

They have other stuff like rivet nuts etc. nice company. I’ve dealt with them three times in the past two months. I bought TimeSert kits; 5/16 coarsekit, 5/16 fine tools to convert the coarse kit to fine, 1/4” kit. I wasted two days hunting for either keenserts or timeserts or the like. I’m not crazy about Helicoil. I will use one in a pinch but not in a spark plug hole

The Time sert bolt inserts get locked in at the bottom so they ca not back out. I don’t know about the spark plug seats.
I have KD spark plug inserts, they don’t lock. You put then in with the spark plug. You use blue Loc Tite on them. Time Sert kits come with a tool that you use to cut a groove with around the top of the hole.
Then there’s a tool that you use to screw the insert in with. The insert has a flange around the top.it fits into the groove and stops ot righ there. But the tool keeps turning a nd spreads the bottom of the insert locking it in place so it can never come out, you would have to drill it out.

The last three places I worked they never gave me spark plug with the can of anti-seize when doing plugs on any car, iron or alloy.
We used a square caged fan to coll the engines quicker before breaking the plugs loose.we just laid it on top of the engine. It doesn’t take long


I
 
When I was a boy a fellow down the road had a Hudson and he blew a spark plug. Made a loud noise but he drove it that way for several years. You could hear him coming down the road.
 
We had neighbor in Wisconsin on the farm that was deaf.
He drove Studebaker with no trunk lid instead of a pickup.
He drove it a long time after the exhaust pipe broke off until somebody finally told him. You could here him coming a long ways.
All the time his wife was complaining of head aches. She was also deaf.
 
I Brock the rings or ring lands or something on an old Volvo.
It would foul the spark plug in just a few seconds.
I removed the pushrods for that cylinder and drove it on 3 cylinders for a year.
 
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