Yep, for those who didn't know, I had a spark plug blow out on my stang a month ago. Well, today I got the time-sert kit and repaired it with a steel thread insert and have the car running again

Plus I figured out a better way to torque the tensioner to get the belt off using a large vise grip

 

congrats man. its always pretty s****y when your car goes down. my last car had sohc and the cam siezed and fried everything onthe head. sparks were just shootin out like crazy. that was time for it to retire and get the stang.

 

Good to see shes back in the saddle. Only bad thing is I remember you saying she goes away for the winter early because of the damage.

 

well, the damage is fixed now at least. I'm considering calling up the insurance company so I can drive it a few times before winter hits.

 

Ive got to put mine away as soon as I find a winter beater. id like it away october 25th when my insurance starts over, so I can just switch to a storage plan.

 

Glad to hear you got the MachGt running again. Not trying to sound ignorant, if your talking about the serpentine belt, did you know that there is a place in the belt tensioner that a ratchet head fits into? No need for vise grips or any kind of gripping device. Makes it super easy to install or remove the belt.

 

Did you ever determine why the spark blew out?

 

the blower is in the way to use that....



The plug blew out because I undertorqued it when I put it in so it worked itself loose before shooting out. This time I properly torqued all of them.

the plug next to it had worked loose as well but hadn't shot out yet. It wasn't even finger tight so it was right on the verge of blowing out.

 

Glad you got it fixed and all back together man. Sucks you gotta put it up for the year though, move down to SC!

 

my bad....

 

No problem, I've got a special vice grip thats big enough to just clamp onto the entire tensioner. makes it pretty easy.

 

Ahh.. I was curious if this was related to the lawsuit against Ford or whatever is going on with that about the spark plugs blowing out. Supposedly they wanna say the heads are defective.. I'm not sure on all that.

 

I think it wouldn't have happened if I would have torqued the plugs properly but there's really no way to know