Well a bit of maintenance was going great today until….

Better still in the threads than laying on top of the piston.......

 

Get some penetrating oil soaking into it now. Keep reapplying it. Can you get needle nose pliers on the remaining piece?


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After it’s soaked overnight, trying moving the piece back and forth and add more penetrating oil.


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Woah, did you sneeze while you were loosening or something? Or has it been in there for 20 years? Can't say I've ever had that happen to me...pray it never does.

 

Use a tap set to get it out.

Although, I've never seen that. I assume the core is solid.

 

Maybe cut the other plug in the same place that the first one broke, so you can actually see what is left in your cylinder head. I’d be concerned what is loose and my fall into the cylinder.


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Now can you imagine a shop having to call a customer to explain this? On the other side now..how would you personally react to that news? And would you pay for the fix..

Stuff like this happens to us professional techs EVERY DAMN DAY. Yet we get yelled at a blamed for "breaking stuff". Now that the shoe is on the other foot..

 

Damn son, have a bad experience today?

 

100%... I would definitely do this and do not try starting the engine till you are 100% certain you have it ALL out..

 

I don't see Tbakowsky's comment as having a bad experience today. He is simply stating that it happens to a professional tech and they get blamed by owners. Yet when an owner does it they take a different view. Like the OP I have done the same thing when I was working on my car. I doubt that the OP (or would I) vent at a tech if it happened to his car (or my car) as the OP understands as do I how easily it can happen no matter how much care is taken. It's life sh&&t happens now matter how much care you take.

 

I might say let's do the head gaskets then. Not kidding! Jim found lots of things when we were doing the 456M, and I had them all addressed.

 

They make a kit for this. Not fun but doable.

(6) Ford F Series 5.4 3 Valve: Broken Spark Plug Removal - YouTube

 

Damn, that sucks.

Hope you find a solution, but definitely take your time on this, as others have mentioned getting pieces into the cylinder would be very bad.

 

I totally did this once. Used a reverse threaded extractor to get the remaining plug out of the head (it was a total fistfight but persistence won the day), then I vacuumed out as best I could, started the motor with that plug still out (open hole) and ran the car for a few seconds to push out any reming debris. Scoped the cylinder to make sure it was totally clean, put a new plug in it and it was like it never happened.

 

Curious as to how it broke - was it a hard snap as soon as you put counter-clockwise torque to it, or did it break after it got loose? I've seen this happen in the latter scenario when the socket wasn't quite squarely seated on the plug, and the crooked socket jammed against the spark plug tube then ratchet handle torque snapped it off in the same fashion.

Seems to me like the plug was over-torqued on installation and has been almost 100% broken for some time - you just put the last nail in the coffin so to say...

I would be most worried about the missing center electrode and ceramic insulator which is now inside the cylinder bore.

 

Also for those concerned with parts on the engine... You could always just rent a borescope from the local auto parts store.

Or pull the cylinder head depending on the motor... It's sometimes cheaper to be extra careful.

 

Harbor Freight has several borescopes for sale.


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Fear not my good friend - there is a tool for this that I successfully used to rescue the same situation on my 348.


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Borescopes that send video to your phone are cheap on amazon, like $25-30. Get the kind with two lenses, one pointing straight ahead the other pointing off to the side.

Good luck!

 

That's exactly what I was intending to do but as you can see from my photo everything came out in one piece. Judging by the OPs photo I expect him to retrieve the same.

Does no harm to look though but IIRC I was so relieved I jumped in the car and went for a spin! LOL

BTW If there are bits in there you can get a tube and duct tape it to the snout attachment on a vaccum cleaner and vaccum the inside out to make sure.

Hows it going OP? Do report back as it will be useful for others.

 

Excellent news and what a relief!

 

Gotta love a happy ending! Congrats!