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Broken Spark plug

Paris12Man

Well Known Member
Help....Greetings, while replacing my spark plugs today I encountered that sick feeling when one plug wouldn?t torqued down. I removed the plug to find that it had broken leaving the threaded portion of the plug in the cylinder head. Does anyone know a process to remove the broken portion from the cylinder?
 
You will want to use a screw extractor called EZ-Out. It turns CCW and self-tightens to grasp the broken threaded barrel. You will need to measure and purchase correct size taper to fit. eBay, Amazon, or local hardware store are your friends...
 
You might also look at Harbor Freight. I bought a small set of screw extractors from HF just the other day.
 
I'll suggest not to use a "cheap" extractor. You may use it dozens of times with great success but when it snaps off just flush or slightly below the surface you'll wish you spent 4 or 5 times that much on high quality tool such as Greenfield or Snap-On. Broken extractors and or broken taps are almost impossible to remove without damaging the part you're working on.

Might also be a good idea to heat the cylinder head with an electric heat gun to really warm it up , differential thermal expansion of the aluminum head vs. the steel portion of the broken spark plug may make the difference between success and the alternative.
 
Successful

I wanted to update this post... I was successful in removing the broken part of the spark plug with a flat blade screw driver. I got lucky this time. Thanks again to all who provided suggestions.
 
I wanted to update this post... I was successful in removing the broken part of the spark plug with a flat blade screw driver. I got lucky this time. Thanks again to all who provided suggestions.

You might want to use a borescope to make sure no broken parts of the spark plug fell into the cylinder...
 
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