2000 civic, 70K miles

was driving home last night. engine started making a sound like a loose header bolt then it quit. Pulled over, smoke coming out from under the hood. I carefully opened the hood, the spark plug was laying on the grill melting the plastic. The coil was hanging down in front of the engine dangling by the coil wire.

spark plug hole threads stripped.

Can I helicoil the spark plug threads ? Do I have to remove the head to keep chips from dropping into the cylinder?

I can get a new coil but what the hell caused this to happen ? I had the car serviced about a year ago, surely if the spark plug wasn't properly torqued it would have shown up long ago ?

thanks for your help

 

That's a new one on me. Never heard of a spark plug getting blown off an engine. It may be possible to take the head to a machine shop and have it repaired, but the easiest and cheapest thing to do is probably to go to a salvage yard and pick up a salvage head, then do the swap yourself.

 

I've had a loose spark plug shoot out of the head before, but the spark plug threads were not stripped.

If you have the money, I would get the head rebuilt and rethreaded. That way you know your head is in good shape. If not, buy a used head. What motor do you have?

 

Baker,

Hey, I have a 2000 Honda Civic and I was driving last night and it sounded like I had a flat tire but what had happened was one of my spark plugs shot out of my head and was making a weird sound.

I had it towed back to my house but I was going to try to see if I could fix it first...Please let me know if you think you know what I should check first...

 

Post up some photos of the remnants of the plug and the hole.

 

update.
i ended up taking mine to a shop. they put a helicoil in the spark bore in the head. not sure how they kept chips from falling into the cylinder. anyway i have about 110k miles on the little green monster and it is still running.

 

One of my spark plugs shot out of my head while I was doing 60 miles an hour on the interstate. It was so powerful when it came out that it dented my hood when it shot out. The paint even chipped off where it dented the hood. Anyway, I changed the helicoil like you Panayoti and also replaced the spark plugs and it seems to be running like new again.

I have 140k miles on my 2000 civic and it's a manual. I took some pics with my phone I'll try to upload them later to show everyone what happened. It was just crazy to me because I had never heard about a spark plug shooting out of the head for no reason! Lol

 

 

It doesn't happen for no reason, it happens because the plug was not properly tightened. You can see all the brown / gray debris that had been blowing out around the loose plug for a long time before it came all the way out. Some of that gray stuff is metal from the threads in the head.