"Joe" wrote in message
oups.com...
On Oct 4, 8:54 am, Frogwatch wrote:
OK, you talked me into having work done on my old truck by somebody
else. They couldnt figger out the problem with it "missing" so I told
em to replace the plugs. Aluminum head right, you are s'posed to put
penetrating oil down into the plug well for a while before trying,
they didnt, STRIPPED ONE OUT the fu*&^%ng morons. They told me they
were waiting for an "insert" to put in it (goes from smaller threads
to bigger ones). I thought there was something wrong with this so I
used their calipers to measure the stripped hole and the plug.
Stripped hole is .063, plug is .055, hmm. By the time I got home I
remembered "Helicoils" although I have never used em.
Today, I went to NAPA and a cute girl told me all about them so I went
back to the shop and asked em why they didnt use them and they told me
they had no experience with em. I told them that if they couldnt get
it done by this afternoon to tow it to my place and I would fix it.

Helicoils are great, replaced many Detroit stripped out head bolts
with them many times. However I'd make them buy a new head.

Problem is they will need to tap the stripped plug hole, and ya know
they are going to get metal shaving into the cylinder, so they need to
pull the head anyway and that's all the labor cost anyway.

Just my 2 cents...

Joe



There's a way to do this without pulling the head. Taps have slots in them,
so you can put grease in the slots. Tap, then pull the tap out periodically
to clean the old grease and replace with new grease. That'll get _most_ of
the shavings. Then, before you insert the new plug, start the engine *very
briefly* without the new plug in the hole. This will blow out the remaining
bits. You don't need to have the engine turn over for more than a few
seconds. I did this on a 62 Buick at 60K miles when I did my first tune-up
and stripped a plug on the way out. The car ran perfectly to over 150K
miles. It finally "died" for other unrelated reasons.

--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com