me and a friend of mine were talking at the shop about broken spark plugs since we had a ford truck towed in after the guy broke a few spark plugs off. on his truck the whole porcelain piece came out leaving only the threads in it. wasnt a problem, i just popped an extractor in there on got em out.

i asked my friend what they would do if only the top broke off leaving some of the porcelain in it, where you couldnt use an extractor. he said that you have to remove the heads and drill them out. he also said that he's heard of people drilling the porcelain out out of the plug with the head still on, removing the threads, then pouring a thicker fluid in like anti-freeze and cranking the engine without the spark plug. he said doing that would shoot out the fluid and all the small pieces that would land inside the engine.

i didnt think that would work so we looked around on the internet but we couldnt find anything. im just curious if anyone has heard of doing this or some other way of doing it without removing the heads.

 

We had a ford Aerostar van come into the shop that was making some TRULY rude noises.... turns out, the owner had broken off a plug, got what was left out, put in new plug.... and... noisy engine.

We just pulled the suspect plug, and cranked the engine a couple times. On the compression stroke, that air coming out of there is moving pretty fast, and any debris left in the cylinder will basically blow out. But, that's only if you get lucky, and it doesn't wedge itself between the piston, and cylinder wall on the way up...... then it's new motor time.

Dropping stuff into cylinders can be fatal for the engine. Or, you may get lucky, and be able to just blow it out. I would be REAL hesitant to fill a cylinder with an incompressible fluid, good way to bend rods. Sure, the fluid can escape out the spark plug hole, but, if it can't escape FAST ENOUGH.... somethings gotta give.

 

As much work as pulling a head would be, I would take that route as it poses less catastrophic possibilities.....but that's just me.

 

Having dealt with sunk/swamped boats over the years rule one is to remove the spark-plugs and turn the motor over by hand/ratchet/ until most of the water is out of the cyld's, then use the starter to spin it over. Of course when the cyld's are full of mud and sand well that's another story, tear down.

I would just pull the head/heads and be done with it.

 

Use a vacuum like shop vac first to pull that crap out?