PSo yesterday I get a call from a friend from work and he has an 05' Acura TL and he said that the center front spark plug was stripped out. Not real sure how, but I went over to see if I could help. I get over there and take a look. I had another friend call me a few months ago with the same thing on a Navagator, clogged cat and it blew the plug out of the head and destroyed the coil. I called him and he said He bought a tool from Hi-Lo but it wouldn't fit in the tube with the socket on it. He had a friend that is a mechanic with a tap that had a 3/8" drive for a standard extension. Well we bought the same kit and the head of the tap wouldn't go into the tube. So it was about 8:00 by the time we found this out and were out of options so I thought of a way to solve it but had to run to the shop to make it work.

we started out with this:



so I decided to turn down the hex round and drill a hole in the center to use a piece of rod into the end.

Started off with a file to knock the edges down, I thought it would be hardened but it wasn't.


Then turned it with a cutting tool.


So while I'm turning the tap Adam was cutting the rod to length then cutting a squarish shape to hold in a tap holder.

Cutting


Quick way to make something square.



Forth side cut, little hard to see:




So after cutting the tap it seemed like cast iron or powdered metal and I was afraid it wouldn't stick to the stainless so I decided to pin it. By now it's 9:45 so no roll pins around to be had, but we did have welding rod so we drilled a hole through the tap and rod and through the other side. I just sanded it down until I could drive the pin through then cut it off and ground it down.






And the final product:



So we get back and man I mean to tell you this is a J.O.B. You thread in a couple of turns packed with grease, pull it out clean the shavings, re grease it and keep going. For the longest time I was thinking it would not work and we were going to trash the head. We kept switching off and finally got it tapped out for the larger size threaded bushing that goes in. It took us until 1:00am to get it finished but he made it to work and isn't having the misfire that kept popping up. Luckily we had the tools but the same thing can be done with a drill press if you ever run into a situation like this.

Jeff