Karl and Listees;  Haven't paid a great deal of attention to this thread,
but this sounds painful.  Let me say that I'm no ASE mechanic, but do have
my shade tree Vanagon mechanics union card, so i feel qualified to guess
and pontificate with the vbest of them.  i don't remember if it was the
John Muir Book or somewhere else, but the fellow with the short hacksaw
blade may have partially had the answer.  My suggestion would be to take
yur trusty grease gun and blob a fair quantity of grease inside the exposed
hole and use the hacksw blade or the carbide router bit on a Dremel tool to
grind away the steel.  My thinking is that the grease blob would catch all
metal shavings, especially if you sused the Dremel.  Once the ring was out,
the worst that cold happen would be a helicoil insert.  My question would
be whether the cylinder should be at TDC to back up the grease blob or not.
 I'd go to a hell of a lot of effort to fix this before I pulled a head
off, but then I'm lazy, too.

Dimwitted Moose and flying Squirrel  90 GL  AR

----------
> From: CarlMarin@AOL.COM
> To: Vanagon@VANAGON.COM
> Subject: Broken Spark Plug Brand?
> Date: Tuesday, July 21, 1998 10:28 PM
>
> Dave writes:
>
> <<<<<
>         To sum this up, it looks like the head needs to come off because
no
> matter what I try, a bunch of stuff is going to make its way into the
> cylinder... Also, the threads do not appear to be crossthreaded (it broke
> about 2 or 3 threads down into the hole and the exposed threads look ok).
> The center electrode came out with the body of the plug so I really only
> have the threads and the three prongs left.
>
> dave
> >>>>>
>
> Say Dave, just curious.  What crappy brand of spark plug was this so I
can
> steer clear of them??
>
> Good luck with your project.  Everything is a learning experience after
all
> and thus well worth the time you put into it.  Let us know how it comes
out.
>
> Regards,
>
> Carl Turner