i was changing the spark plugs on my integra and noticed the spark plugs had been misthreaded from the previous owner and was wonderin if i had to pull off the head to rethread it or can i rethread it with the head intact?? if i keep the head on the motor, what about the metal shavings that are goin to fall into the cylinder?? need some advice, thanks in advance

 

Well you can either no do it, or ghetto rig a vacuum cleaner setup to clean out the cylinder cavity after your mod. I would say get a good helicoil kit, or better yet just chase the threads lightly. Maybe you shouldnt mess with it at all, assuming that the spark plug is not about to blow out of the hole.

But for the vacuum, get yourself some clear tubing and a good roll of 3M Super 33 tape and tape the clear tube on the end of a powerful shop vac. Maybe with the clear tune you can still see what you are doing a bit and see if you are sucking anything up.

Then get one of those air chuck adapters and blow your air compressor in there and try to remove any excess shavings the vac didnt get out. Just keep in mind that you are just as likely to blow them into the intake as you are out the exhaust.

And you might want to make sure that the valves are closed on that cylinder to keep them from lodgind in the valve train.

Im not recommending you do any of this, but if *I* were going to do it that is what I would do.

Jon Black

 

maybe i should just pull of the head and let a machine shop do the job, anyways how does the helicoil work?? and whats involved??

 

i think you should pull off the head... as fun as the vacum sounds i wouldnt risk having tiny chips of aluminum floating in my cylinder walls....

the machine shop will prolly charge you 30 dollars where as you would have to hone the cylinder walls if the debre cuts groves on the walls...(ontop of that new bearigns, rings, etc...)

 

yeah I agree, just pull the head off. It's a lot of work, but a couple hours and 100 bux now (you should replace the head gasket) is way worth having to take the entire motor out to possibly rebore it and move to oversize pistons because of heavy scoring.

 

Never helicoiled on a honda, but a bike yes. We were also worried about getting metal shavings down the cyl. so we coated the helicoil with vasaline and it worked. No metal shavings down the cyl

 

yeah, not down the cylinder but stuck to the vasaline. Once that vasaline burns off, in roughly one combustion cycle, those aluminum particles will fall into the chamber.