[s-cars] Thanksgiving Misadventure

[Fred Munro]

Keith;

If you have some decent threads left in the head, you may be able to coax
the car back home. The force on the spark plug threads when the engine is
running may not be as high as I've always assumed. Your saga has just
brought back to mind something that happened to me many years ago. A buddy
and I used to do a lot of snowmobile "boondocking" north of here many miles
from the nearest roads, towns, and trails. On one these trips my machine
blew the spark plug out of one cylinder. There wasn't much left of the
threads - you could push the plug in and out by hand. We were about 50 miles
of heavy going from the nearest road at the time and the options to extract
the machine were limited to say the least. With little to lose, I wrapped
the spark plug threads with duct tape and screwed it back in (you do always
carry duct tape, don't you?). It actually got me back home with stopping
every 10 miles or so to tighten the plug back up. I couldn't believe it.
Duct tape really is magical stuff.
If you have some decent threads left in the head, you may be able to coax
the car back home if you take it easy and stop to check the plug every now
and then. I'd leave the injector for that cylinder unplugged as well if you
go that route. It won't hurt the engine to run on 4 cylinders for a bit as
long as you aren't washing oil off the walls of the dead cylinder with
unburnt gasoline. If you can, you may want to check that injector before you
start. I find it very odd that you would get that much fuel from an injector
that was unplugged. It may be defective.

Good luck! This will be a Thanksgiving you'll always remember!

Fred Munro
'97 S6

-----Original Message-----
From: s-car-list-bounces at audifans.com
[mailto:s-car-list-bounces at audifans.com] On Behalf Of Keith Franchetti
Sent: November 25, 2011 10:24 PM
To: s-car-list at audifans.com
Subject: Re: [s-cars] Thanksgiving Misadventure

Hi All-

Thanks again for the additional help and support today, including with
understanding AAA ins and outs.  I can't take advantage of long-range towing
till 7 days after today (when I re-joined).  But I CAN bring a friend and
his card--or just *be *the guy on that card.

It's been suggested quite a bit that it's quite possible threads are not too
damaged to get a plug back in there in such a way it might hold torque, or
that, at least it might not hurt to much to try that, provided I do a good
job on cleaning up/vacuuming inside and out.  Got some special, super small
shop-vac attachments that might help with that.  Can't find a boroscope to
rent or even buy TODAY whose head will fit through the plug hole.  But I do
have some tubing to stick through the hole to at least vacuum out combustion
chamber of whatever might be left in there.

It's also been suggested that the valve cover gasket might have failed.
 Could this explain why, even though I unplugged the juice to the #5
injector, I still ended up with so much fuel flooding all over the place
during my limp from breakdown site to the bus station?  Coolant did not
appear contaminated with oil, so I'm relatively confident no head gasket
breach.

I'm going to see about getting that gasket set before I head down tomorrow.
 I've got an old set of coils and spare plugs.  I have a ride down lined up.
If the stars align, when I get there, I'll find an outlet for my 100'
of extension cord.  I've got rags and other various implements for
cleaning/drying things out, and vacuuming debris.  If I can ascertain the
plug hole might not be too badly damaged (closer inspection of the pics I
took of the mess with my camera phone suggest I might not have lost any
pieces of the plug into the chamber), I might proceed with changing the
valve cover gaskets, cleaning the threads, plug bores, combustion chamber,
switching in new ignition coil and boot, installing plug, and seeing how she
fires up.  If no dice, can still call AAA and we come back on the flatbed.
Or, failing that, I'm AT the bus station this time.

Cue *Mission Impossible* theme.

Of course any and all further wisdom is welcome.  And I'll report back.

Keith
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