Rusty Nuts

Take that title however you like. All I can say is that Volkswagen and their fillister head "cheese head" screws deserve a special place in hell.

The weather, while not balmy last night, was at least tolerable in three layers and flannel lined jeans. The main thing was to keep moving, pushing, pulling or otherwise performing actions that burned calories and generated a little internal body heat. The task was simple, though with lots of individual jobs: prepare the engine to be removed. None of these tasks are hard, or even especially time consuming...when all of the fasteners are well lubricated or haven't been left to sit and calcify, rusting into a solid lump of red oxide with no trace where the slot or bolt edges were. But in those cases, I have seen three situations and solutions:

1. The bolt or screw is just simply tired and has spent too long in the same place. A 'little' corrosion has formed between the bottom of the head and what it holds down, or deep down in the threads. That 'little' corrosion is going to make the fastener want to act like it is welded on.

Solution: Leave your WD40 in the closet, and put the 3-in-1 oil away. This calls for something that has all of the wicking power of acetone. PB Blaster is its name, and it smells like being down-wind of a disused fracking facility. But I have found over and over that a touch of this elixir on a bolt that seems welded into place will, when augmented with patience over a day or three, cause many otherwise hopeless cases to release. But for heaven's sake, don't get any on you, and if you might, wear clothes that you have no intention of being seen in after you leave the garage. This stuff is potent, in both the efficacious and olfactory senses.

2. The bolt or screw has been painted over. Great for keeping the rust out, but lousy for removal, since the head has essentially been 'glued' to the contact surface. Also, internal-wrenching heads (Phillips, Hex, Torx, Slot) tend to be filled with the paint, which hardens and makes it very difficult to fully insert the driver into the head socket. In the case of Phillips, which is specifically designed to prevent over tightening by causing the driver to jump out of the head ("cam-out") when the head is resistant to turning, getting painted is almost a worst case scenario, because much torque must be applied to get the shaft to back out, overcoming not only the design intent of the Phillips drive (cam-out), but also the reduced depth of the drive socket AND the increased resistance having been glued in place by the paint. Ugh.

Solution: Believe it or not, a dollop of paint stripper in the bolt head socket and around the edges of the painted head is just the thing for breaking these poor unfortunates loose.


3. The socket (or relief cut, or broach on an internally wrenched bolt or screw) may already have been buggered up (a horrible and accurate word) by someone trying to muscle it into place or out.

Solution: Do your darnedest to get it to back out and if the threads are shot, drill it out and try an easy out. Failing that, I sometimes take a cut-off tool to the edges of the head, making two parallel flats on either side of the head which I can then get vice grips clamped on to. At this point, unless the threads are simply rusted solid, it IS coming out.

The idiotic number of fasteners required JUST for the rear engine mantling. The arrows in red are easy to get at, but
often rusted solid. The grey ones are both tough to get at AND rusted solid.

So I got on with the job last night, disconnecting the voltage regulator, the vent fan, the ballast resistors, as well as the power cabling to the battery, the starter, the coil, and finally the Air Flow Meter (AFM) and the Electronic Control Unit (ECU.) I disassembled the vacuum hoses I'd been so careful to assemble two weeks ago for testing and disconnected all of the hoses to the Decel unit that is bolted to the fuel tank firewall. With the hoses and the S-Boot removed, and the airfilter assembly out, it begins to feel roomy by comparison with its normal inaccessibility. While underneath disconnecting the starter, I tried the thermostat bolt that I had treated with PB Blaster three days previous. The thermostat is not the most stable thing to try to twist against (it is a bellows that isn't designed to be torqued quite so agressively. It has also failed, making the bellows even more prone to sagging open. (Yep, another $100 or so. These are no longer mass manufactured, though there are some enthusiasts who have had new ones fabricated by the original supplier. I suppose I should be grateful that they're available at all, at any price.)

The last items were disconnecting the throttle cable, and then trying (vainly) to budge the heater control cables. SNAP! The left hand cable let go at the lug, rather than the nut breaking loose. Add it to the pile of replacements: 211711629N $20. The right hand was already disconnected.

At this point I had disconnected all of 'plug n tug' connections, so I began on the starter. I got the bottom bolt loose and then had to be reminded that this was a year with the 'D' head bolt that is attached by the bolts at the engine side, rather than the transmission side. I locked on to that bolt at the engine side with an open end wrench and despite popped veins on my part it went...nowhere. The lower bolts took some steady strain to let go, but not much grief: they had apparently been tightened to spec the last time the engine was out for a clutch (circa 1997 if the paperwork is to be believed.) Just for kicks, I tested the bolts for the transmission nose cone support. Those are unlikely to have turned since manufacture. They happily broke loose at about 50ft lbs. I'd estimate. Amazing.

I had two final jobs: The first was to try the screw heads that hold on the rear mantling so that there is no interference when the engine is unbolted and pulled back from the transmission. This is where I discovered that all of them appeared to be almost permanently affixed, and doubled my resolve to replace every Phillips or 'cheese head' bolt possible with a broached head bolt. Nuts to this.

The last job was to test the vacuum solenoid on the air filter housing. A brief description is in order: VW used to dump the captured gasoline vapors coming off of the tank into a carbon canister which was immediately re-pressurized by air from the cooling fan when the engine started. The trapped gasoline vapors  were routed into the carb for burning, which was better than just dumping them out on the ground. (The hazardous, wasteful and idiotic methods used prior to the 1968 models.) Unfortunately, this tended to cause the engine to over-rich when it was likely already hot and would have a difficult time starting in an already enriched condition. (Gasoline is most prone to vaporize the warmer it gets. Think of a hot tarmac parking lot in August...in Texas. Lots of vapor, and no where for it to go.)

The EEC valve was added to the LJet engines as a means by which the saturated charcoal in the EVAP container could be purged into the engine slowly without swamping the engine with a lot of unmetered fuel. The EEC valve on the air filter housing was connected to the vacuum signal generated by the intake air plenum, which only presented when the engine was under heavy load or acceleration. So you start the engine in that Texas parking lot and the EEC stays closed. Put it in first gear and drive away, you suddenly generated a whole WAD of vacuum, which advances the spark at the distributor, and at the same time, clicks open the EEC valve, allowing the captured fuel vapors to be purged into the intake stream when precision metering doesn't much matter, e.g. under heavy acceleration.

Unfortunately, since the Ljet system is predicated on having 100% awareness of all intake air, any vacuum leak is catastrophic to the running tune of the engine, as well as the leaned out condition of the fuel-air charge that causes exhaust valve temperatures to skyrocket. Since the EEC is 'yet another place you can leak from' best make sure it is working correctly, and holds vacuum. So I did. Hooked up a 1 meter length of vacuum hose, brushed off the other end, stuck it in my mouth and gave a pull on it. CLUNK. Good, the diaphragm in the EEC valve is working. I'll stand here for 30 seconds with the hose stuck to my tongue and see if we hold vacuum or if we're leaking. Nothing. Pull the hose off my tongue: CALUNK.

Smile. I just avoided taking two hours to hand fabricate and seal a replacement vacuum valve for the EEC. All things being equal, a great evening. Next up... increasingly aggressive treatments shown above to deal with the some ten or a dozen glued on bolts that need an attitude adjustment.

After these items are done, I will need to stop work and again perform a pick-up clean-up on the garage to put things in good order before dropping the engine. Once it is out, there are going to be increasing numbers of components floating around the garage, so I need to have systems, procedures and/or rituals in place to deal with the excess.

The only remaining components (according to the Bentley Workshop Manual, and the much more shade-tree centric ratwell.com) I have only to complete the following:

• Dump oil & filter (DONE)
• Rear mantling out (DONE)
• Brake Hose check valve, disconnected
• Oil filler remove (plug with shop cloth so debris does not enter) (DONE)
• Remove the rear bumper (17mm bolts, use impact wrench) (LOOSE)
• Complete removal of the starter (D bolt on the top right side of the engine.) (LOOSE)
• Remove LH pushrod tube cover (REMOVED)
• Break loose rear carrier bolts from bottom of engine as well as from chassis (PB Blaster likely) (LOOSE)
• Break loose other three engine to transmission bolts (17mm) (LOOSE)

Armored Underbelly

It has been hovering in the single digits here, far too cold to do any work out in the garage presently. Having recently had everyone in the house sick with one thing and another, and having dealt with the added drama of  my daily driver throwing belts and melting down the radiator, I'm sort of welcoming the chance to rock back on my heels for a moment and catch my breath. But not too long....

Hoses from GEEBEE racing arrived Tuesday: the Decel valve hose and the Positive Crankcase Ventilation (PCV) hose. They are beautiful, but last Monday I noted that the fit is not quite right on the S-Boot I ordered from them. (Then again, it was the prototype, so that might explain part of the problem. I'm still going to inquire.)

In lieu of a blow by blow of what I've been working on (turn a bolt, then run back in side to warm up again), I'm going to document a procedure that will need to be run to reseal the bottom of the vehicle. I've gleaned (liberated? harvested? R-pp-d O-f? this procedure from Bay-window Bus guru Colin "Itinerant-Aircooled" Kellogg who has forgotten more about the Bay Bus than I'll probably ever know. I'm including my cost estimates and comments at the end.


Morning: Scrape and brush any loose flakes off. [If it is loose enough to come off with an aggressive scrape and brushing, don't cry because you're losing the factory undercoat. Cheer, because the metal is going to spend just a few moments uncovered, then cleaned up and re-sealed, then you won't have to worry about it again for a bit.]

Mid-morning: Wash the underside with plenty of high-pressure water. [If you have the option, use an actual  pressure washer, and if you want to get very agressive, hook it up to your hot-water tap. Between the heat and the  pressure, you'll remove more gooey, cooked on nasty-crud, and the heat will help the water evaporate faster.] Then wrap colored tape around components that you DON'T want to get paint and sealer on, such as brake hoses, fuel hoses and other rubber components. This is care of the chassis, not moving mechanisms  like brakes, shocks, moving parts of suspension, with rubber boots, etc.

Midmorning nap: let dry. [ For the truly paranoid, use a box fan to move air across the bottom and speed evaporation.]

 After Lunch: Mask off the edges of your Bus so that the sealer, primer and paint that you're going to be spraying won't get away and wind up on tires, external body paint, and other places that will be unsightly or interfere with the mechanism's use. Spray all rusty-ish surfaces with rust-catalyzing primer, get up in all drain holes, compressed air is very helpful for driving it up inside and out of reach of a brush. [Rust-Catalyzing Primer meaning 'Any primer containing phosphoric acid specifically designed to convert hydrating, red-oxide rust to stabilized black oxide. It won't cure perforated cancer or make weakened metal magically regrow, but it will at least temporarily halt the progress of hydrating rust.]

After Lunch nap: let dry. [Again with the fan. The down-wind neighbors are going to love this. ]

Afternoon: Spray three light coats of paint-able rubberized undercoating. This should take approximately 8 cans. [Because these rubberized undercoatings are available in multiple colors, take advantage of it: Use different colors per coat: white for the first coat, silver (aluminum) for the second coat, and black for the final coat. You will be able to see some clearly which portions you have painted and which you have not. Also, when there is damage, (inevitable) cracking or sluffing of the undercoat, you'll be able to see it. Having your attention called to it is the first line of defense.]

Afternoon nap: let dry

Late afternoon: four cans of universal black any color on the undercoating. [In my case, I'll be using flat black in the front wheel wells, and gloss black everywhere else. The wheel wells are visible. The undercarriage is not, and I want as slick and impenetrable a bottom surface from the topcoat as possible.]

Beer.

Nota Bene: In the case of those of us with a BA6 heater, make double damn sure you don't paint the heater body with the rubberized undercoating. Remove the heater for this operation and tape up all of the wiring,  hoses, etc. Then as a final step, perform all of these steps to the belly cover, both sides, before bolting it back into place.

Costs: $8

Scotch / 3M Blue Painters Tape $4
Drop cloth: $4 (3mil painters)


Primer: $28
Rust-Oleum Rust Metal Primer 249330 - $7 x 4

Sealer: $80

Rust-Oleum LeakSeal White 267970 - $10 x 2

Rust-Oleum LeakSeal Aluminum (Silver) 267972 - $10 x 3
Rust-Oleum LeakSeal Brown 267976 - #10 x 3

That nasty noise

As I have evaluated what will need to be done for next steps, I have run bang up against a surprise: I wasn't expecting to need refurb this engine. I was expecting that it would be a deader, and I would be pulling it out this weekend and start shopping for Subarus. Instead the engine has pulled a surprise whizzer on me by remaining viable long after I would have guessed that it was DOA.

Here's the surprise: How much can I afford to make it run? How much can I afford not to? I had budgeted $300 to answer the "run-able" question. I spent $150 and got my answer. Now I need to spend more to make it "road-able" which is a much more expensive proposition. How much more? Here's a rough estimate:

• Heat Exchangers (which also act as the exhaust manifold) $340
• Engine Shrouds (to support replacing the Exchangers) $20 x 8 = $160
• Allen Head shroud screws (M8 1x12mm) $17 boltdepot.com
• Muffler & Tailpipe: $200
• Vacuum, Fuel & Ventilation Hoses: $160

Which kicks out a total of $877. Ow. That is the starting price. It goes up from there as we find things not anticipated. (What if the distributor is toast? That's $150 for a SVDA replacement. What about the cost consumables like oil, etc? What if the alternator is cooked?) Also note that this has nothing to do with suspension / brakes / electrical / body / tires. This is just the engine.

So I'm going to start the process of the 'first things' that cost little to nothing but time:

1. Gum-out the throttle valve. DONE
2. Replace as many vacuum hoses as practical and confirm that all of the vac hoses are connected correctly, esp a direct connect between the plenum and the FPR. DONE
3. Test vacuum diaphragm on distributor. DONE (GOOD)
4. Perform a full compression test on cylinders 4, 2, & 1 to see where they are relative to cylinder #3 which came in at 100psi. Testing yielded the following results:
1. Cylinder #3 100 psi
2. Cylinder #4 150 psi
3. Cylinder #2 100 psi
4. Cylinder #3 120 psi
5. Try the engine again.(DONE. Still stalls after almost runaway conditions.)
6. Valve Adjust. (Skipped, nothing more to learn.)
7. Test Alternator charging. (Skipped. Dash lamp turns off once the engine is running, showing charging.)
8. Clean out engine compartment with vacuum cleaner. (Skipped. Dropping Engine.)

All of these items cost time and little else. Which is good, since I'm still having to work out costing for all of the parts that I need to buy, as listed above.

A Prost!

New Injectors & seals? Check.
New plugs? Check.
New points? Check.
New Battery cables? Check.
Battery charge topped up? Check.
Fire Extingusher at hand? Check.
Jerrycan of gas? Check.
Fuel rail pressurized? 40 PSI, check.

Here we go....

I should say, first, that my experience with Aircooled VW engines has always been on the carbureted side. I've never actually run a fuel injected ACVW. So frankly, I had no idea what to expect. My 20 years of experience suggested a coughing, sputtering, gagging, and hacking while the engine shook off its torpor and varnished bits crunched and blasted their way through long dormant passages. Certainly that was what I expected. Or nothing. Or just a cranking engine as I have gotten previously, but no fire.

VRRRROOOAAAMMMMHHHH!!!

I think I spent the first several milliseconds being purely shocked. Then I was very busy, since once the engine had caught, it seemed to want to rev completely out of control! I made a fast leg back from the driver's door to the engine compartment, reached all the way back to the firewall and gave the throttle valve a counter-clockwise twist to close down the throttle valve. The throttle felt like an ooy-gooey mess and shows every sign of needing a liberal working over with a can of gum-out. Also noticed that the return spring was pretty weak. With a twist on the throttle valve, the engine dropped into the 2500 rpm range, and stayed there.

Just then, I saw my wife running out. She had heard the ruckus (like a rhinoceros rhythmically ramming a steel shed) and come running. While she offered me congratulations, it was in the form of yelling over the din, 'it smells like something died!' Thanks so much. The exhaust was probably rattling mouse turds all the way down the exhaust system, which bothers me not at all. The goal is to prove that the engine is sane and run-able, not that the exhaust (which is quite rotten and will probably have to be replaced end to end) is in good condition.

After about 3 minutes, the Auxiliary Air Regulator (AAR, which provides big gulps of air to make the engine run faster during warm-up) finally timed out and closed itself down. Now there wasn't enough air, and the engine stumbled and gently stopped. A backfire or two. Now that I've seen that the engine can be made to run, and probably has life still in it, it is time to do all of the things to it that have been neglected. The initial list reads like so:

Get down to the throttle valve and give it a bath with some gum-out.
Check that the AFM (Air Fuel Meter) flap has not been jambed or warped by those backfires.
Consult ratwell.com for correct lengths of fuel and vacuum hose.
Then execute the first purchase from Bus Depot.

While these next steps are taken for the engine, I'll start work on the sliding door, which is going to need a bucketful of TLC before it operates correctly again. More on that next time.

Aiming

As I mentioned in my last post, the difficulties with spark plug replacement on the Type4 engine are numerous. Angle, axis, access, occlusion, visibility...everything is stacked against you. After my first experience removing a single plug and then having to take a week to research, buy, and install corrective hardware, you can imagine I wouldn't be too thrilled with what the other three cylinders were going to yield.

I wasn't surprised when 2 out of three went hysterically awry.

But first, some good news to temper the hilarity of watching this engine continue to nibble chunks out of me.

I came back two days after installing the time-sert into the #3 plug bore, and backed the 19mm long-reach plug out of the bore and installed my compression tester fitting. With a charged battery, I turned the engine over five revolutions. I'll admit that I was nervous about tightening down too much on the compression tester threading...what if it got stuck? But there were no problems getting it back out and I was thrilled to discover that even with the moderately loose installation, I got 100psi on the cylinder! Woohoo! This is about 20 lbs under what the engine would have run new, and very good for an engine of its apparent age, wear, and long disuse. The 19mm plug went back into place and I was relieved to move on from the #3 cylinder which had caused me so much grief.

Right behind it, #4 (left, rear) and I was relieved that it was so much closer to the back door of the engine compartment. Easier access, right? It was. Right up until the moment when the old plug I was removing dropped out of the socket and down into the engine. By 'down into' I don't mean into the engine internals. It was now trapped somewhere between the engine mantling over the head/cylinders, and thoroughly out of view. This is the 'plug eating' behavior I had been warned about. There is an old gag among Bus people that a guy inherits a bus that his uncle could never keep running. When he decides to rebuild the engine, he pulls it out, and when he removes the mantling, a dozen unused spark plugs fall out on the ground. Uncle never could get the hang of getting those plugs in.

Now I know how uncle feels. Because I put the new Autolite 455 into the socket, and upon attempting to install it, the new plug fell out of the socket (you install the plugs vertically) and down into the same abyss. I lucked out: my inspection mirror (looks like an over-sized dental mirror scaled for an elephant) has a magnetic tip on a telescoping end. I extended it and probed around blind in the hole and finally latched on to something, hauled it carefully out. It was a new plug. A new (though dirty) Bosch Platinum. I went fishing again. This time I came up with the Autolite which I had lost down the pit. I was wondering if I stuck the magnetic tip down there again if I might pull up Jimmy Hoffa's union badge. I never did find the used Bosch copper core plug that had been installed and had fallen out of the socket.

This socket is specifically designed to hang on to spark plugs; it has a rubber o-ring inset inside it which makes a nice friction fit for most plugs. I put the Autolite back into the socket, and tugged on it. Solid. I maneuvered the socket back into place (distance, axis, axis, offset) by dead reckoning and bone conduction  up the extension, and felt the threads click into place, turned it down smooth, snug-n-a-tug. Pulled on the extension to release the socket and leave the plug....

The socket came loose from the extension. All I drew back was the bare stub. Now the socket was hanging on to the plug too well. Much wiggling and swearing later, I had the socket retrieved, stuck back on the end of the extension. Well, at least I had run out of ways that I could get bit:

1. I've had the plug come loose from the socket and drop into the engine.
2. I've had the plug refuse to come loose from the socket and left the socket on the plug.

How wrong I was. I moved over to the #1 cylinder (front, right) and had no trouble, but when I was down to the #2 (rear, right) I discovered the missing possibility: 1 and 2 together. A tug on the extension caused the old plug to come out, but the socket did not smoothly slide out of the access hole in the mantling; it caught the edge, and this specialty socket came off the end of the extension and the socket with the old spark plug fell into the void under the mantling. They may have fallen through a space-time rift, since ten minutes of probing with the magnetic end of my inspection rod and my most creative swearing did not draw it back into this world.

Call it a moral victory. I stopped at Autozone the next day and bought what I can only describe as the perfect tool: a 13/16 spark plug socket permanently locked on its own extension with a universal joint in it, and an embedded rare-earth magnet to hang on to the spark plug. If I lose another plug to this engine, it won't be for lack of the right tool.

The #2 plug installed swimmingly. With the injector seals arrived, installed and the injectors bolted back into place, all that is left is to reconnect the fuel ring, pressurize and hope the engine lights. Because I'll running out of ideas of what might be interfering with this engine starting now.

FI and what happened after

The time spent since the excellent moment when I got a cough out of the engine showing that it was not dead entirely has been quite full. I've managed to find new challenges and discover why mail-order is not always desirable.

First was the Fuel Injectors. I can have the four vintage ones cleaned for $80 shipped. That is assuming I'm willing to wait six weeks for the round trip AND that all four of them are salvageable. This is instead of paying $175 EACH for Bosch replacements.

I cheaped out: I mail-ordered GP Sorensen from Autozone and got away for $103. Or thought I had.

It turns out that these clowns do not ship the $0.01 cost o-ring seals with the injector, the way everyone else does. (Who sells new injectors and puts old seals on them? What fat head at Autozone thought this up?) So after getting the injectors, I discovered that the seals were missing. I ordered the seals for $3 and then enjoyed the indignity of paying $6 shipping while waiting another week for them to show up.

Type4 engine on an assembly stand with the engine mantling removed.
Here you  can see the considerable angle that each of the plugs sits at.
The hole in the mantling to access them is directly OVER them, rather than
on axis with the plugs. NOT a friendly design.

I returned to the bus feeling pretty burned, but decided to complete the installation of Autolite copper core plugs. This is when I learned about the tendency of the Type4 engine to 'eat' spark plugs. The engine mantling which holds the pressurized air over the heads and cylinders stands off quite a ways from the top of the engine. As in, 4+ inches at the rear distance between the top of the mantling and the top of the heads. That's a long way to reach into a blind cave with a spark plug dangling from a 13/16 socket. Then you must get the socket over the existing plug blind (because the plug hole is only big enough to admit the socket.) The final coupe de grace is that the plugs do not fit in straight down, but at an angle, in two axis of rotation.

With this is stack of difficulties arguing against the owner, it is no surprise that these engines often go for 100 thousand miles without a plug change. It's just too much of a headache. But I needed the plugs out for other reasons: with the plugs out, this is how I'm going to test the compression of each of the cylinders to see if I have an engine or a slag heap. Having removed the injectors preparatory to replacing them (when the seals got in) I decided to tackle the #3 (forward, left) first, since it is farthest from the cooling and and the state of its plug can tell you the most information in the least time. With a lot of digging and grunting and maneuvering, I got the socket on to the plug and it clicked loose from its bore and came out. I pulled it up out of the bowels triumphantly and got the shock of day: never mind how the plug looked (carbon fouled, no surprise) what the hell is that sleeve around the plug!?!

Oh, dammit. When some ape with an impact wrench (or just no sense) stuffs a new plug into the bore and cranks down on it to a dying strain, bad things are going to happen. In the case of the VW engine, the heads and case are an aluminum-magnesium alloy; light, strong, dissipates heat well...and soft. Well, soft compared to carbon steel threads on spark plugs. So you had better not cross-thread a plug when installing it: the softer alloy of the threads in the bores won't stand a chance.

Remember what I just said about what a nightmare these engines are to change plugs in? Your chance of cross threading them is very high, and your visibility poor. When the threads in the head bore are ruined, your combustion chamber won't seal, and burning gasses escape under pressure. As the engine heats up and expands, the fit around the plug becomes looser until...FOOM! You shoot the plug right out of the head. When I was twenty, I had a 1971 Super Beetle which had this fault; someone in its past had been too zealous with the wrench and ruined the threads. That engine spat up a spark plug about twice a week, because at the time, I didn't know that there was anything that could be done about it.

Above is the classic Helicoil, a stainless steel wire wound into a coil.
Below is the time-sert, a solid insert with threads on the outside
(to bite into the head) and threads on the inside to hold the plug.
Helicoils are classic 'field repair' tech, but time-serts are Mil-Spec
inserts and designed to last the rest of the life of the engine.

Enter the Helicoil. This is a dingus that looks a little like a wound spring made of very thin, hard metal. You twist this down into the bore and then thread the spark plug in after it. This makes the helicoil cut into the sides of the bore, locking the plug in place. A helicoil is fine...for a temporary field repair. But it can never properly guide a plug into place.

The super-duper improved version is called a Time-sert, which does the same thing only more expensively and more permanently. The Time-sert is a precision cast insert that looks like a sleeve with threads on the inside and outside of the sleeve. Using special (and expensive, for a single use) tools, you drill out the bore removing the original threads, then use a second tool to cut new threads, and then use a third tool to drive this self-locking sleeve into place. When complete, an engine with Time-sert inserts in the head probably is more durable and resistant to cross threading than when it came from the factory.

In this case, however, the portion of the time-sert which had locked into the head had failed when I tried to remove the plug. Instead of getting the plug, I got the whole assembly, plug AND time-sert. I couldn't put the plug back in; the business end looked like it had been painted with coal-tar. The goo had clearly made its way up the threads and glued the plug to the time-sert, which is why the time-sert gave up its hold on the head first.

So either quit now, buy a new head (no!) or find some way to put a time-sert BACK into that hole, and make sure it STAYS there. I opted for the third option, and did so with the intention of being a cheap skin-flint about it. I was NOT going to buy the whole tool kit to prep the bore for a time-sert. The bore was fine. Also, there was no practical way to perform the work when the engine had its mantling on it, which means pulling the engine and stripping it. Too much time / headache / hassle. So I traded out the mild steel time-sert which had come out of the head for a new copper time-sert (the better to match the aluminum-magnesium alloy of the head with) and some Loctite 266.

If you're thinking that Loctite isn't going to last long at 400*F (the operating temperature for this head) you'd be right...normally. However 266 is the industrial strength extreme application Loctite. Once it cures, it won't let go or weaken until it passes 600*F. I'm not too concerned about that: the head would be a pile of slag if it  hit that temperature, and the Loctite 266 is only to hold the time-sert in place and not let it rotate out of the bore.

So more days waiting for time-serts and Loctite. None of these parts are available locally, so I was forced to mail order. (Really? 10 miles from Philadelphia, 70 miles from New York City and I can't buy this stuff at an automotive outlet? Nope.) When I received them, I lubricated a 'short' Autolite plug (only 13mm of threads) and screwed the copper time-sert onto it as far as it would go. Then I carefully added light beads of Loctite 266 to the outer threads, and carefully screwed the plug into the bore with my socket. Snug-and-add-a -tug. Then I backed out the shorty spark plug I had used to seat it, leaving the timesert in place.

With the time-sert in place, I waited 24 hours for the Loctite to set. Finally, I installed the correct Autolite 455 copper core plug with a 19mm reach on the threads.

That's one lousy plug replaced. Next time, I'll tell you what I learned about the other three, and how this engine develops an appetite for plugs and tools.