Who fix the head w/ Heli-Coil in town?
 

My kid just blew up his kart engine. The spark plug came out. It look like spark plug thread is strip on the cylinder head. Any body know where to fix this? His 1st race coming up this Sunday.

Talk to Robert at AIMS on Glendale. 359-8866

He has done a bunch of machine work for me recently.

Actually... heli-coil is pretty do-it-yourself-able. You just need to drill out and tap the existing hole, which is a breeze if it's aluminum, and not all that hard if it's iron/steel. Then the insert goes in with some thread-locker, and you're pretty much done.

All you need for tools are the proper sized bit and tap, which aren't expensive unless we're talking about a 1"+ hole. In fact, there are heli-coil kits that come with the bit, tap, locker and insert... and I would think a spark plug hole repair would be the most common repair as well.

What about all the metal bits that end up in the combustion chamber?

I assumed he did not want to do the work...

My concern would be getting both the drill and tap aligned for that large of a hole/seat.

Um, take the head off before drilling?

If you're just cutting away old threads, the drill is pretty self guiding. I had to turn a threaded 10mm hole into a 14mm hole on my old block to heli-coil one of the idler pulleys. It was really a quick and easy job... no crazy setup... just drill and tap carefully and let the tools do the work. But STi blocks are aluminum... so that made it significantly easier.

Oh yah! :idea:

Thank everyone. The engine builder already mail out a loaner head to us. It should be here tomorrow.