Hey guys,
I was chasing other issues and when removing a spark plug, it cracked in half. Do I need to get a borescope or something to make sure I don’t have ceramic shards in my engine?
Thanks,
Matt

 

Have an air compressor? Blow some air in the spark plug hole. (make sure both valves are closed first.)

 

You think any ceramic shards would blow back out the spark plug port.

 

Hard to imagine how ceramic got into the cylinder ... if it broke while pulling the plug out the metal base would still be in place blocking the hole.
You were there, I was not .... just seems difficult for it to actually get in the small hole.

This is where a bore scope would come in handy ..... just saw one on Amazon for $25 that connects to your phone .... never know when or where you will need one.

 

Yeah… I didn’t think about this possibility until after I removed the rest of the plug, thereby introducing the opportunity for ceramic to drop into the engine. Aside from this forum, I got two more people saying it’s no big deal so I’m going with it. I’ll try to blow it out with compressed air and then let the engine blow anything remaining out naturally once it’s buttoned back up.
And yes, I saw the cheap usb cameras. I’m definitely getting one for the future.

 

While I never suggest or condone this type of action ..... it happens.
I have a old Flathead 6 cylinder engine, to find TDC on it you need to remove a plug and use a stick to watch the piston height.
My plug had some carbon built up in it and not thinking I just used a hammer and nail to punch through it.

Naturally when I went to start it up the wife just happened to wander out into the shop .... It sounded terrible, the small piece of carbon bouncing around and then it got caught in the exhaust valve seat and the valve just ground it to a powder and pushed it out .... then it ran fine.

I want to say it was very ugly when it happened, the whole escapade may have lasted 45 seconds .... seemed like a hour at the time .... I really had no time to think or respond .... that was 2018 and it runs fine today.

 

Ceramic is pretty hard..... if there is any left in the cylinder, it will bounce around in there, making all sorts of rude noises, but not necessarily get blown out. I would be more tempted to disable spark, and crank the engine a bit with the spark plug out.... try and blow it out the hole.

 

You can also take a shop vac and reduce the hose using duct tape to a small hose the size of a vacuum line or a little larger but small enough to fit in the spark plug hole and vacuum around in the cylinder, rotating around to blindly try and vacuum whatever bits are in there. Or you could just fire it up and see what happens, hehe.

 

Did you break the ceramic in the base of the plug? If it just broke above the metal base just replace the plug.

 

So far so good. Took it around the block yesterday. No weird noises or anything. Hopefully there will be no long term damage.