Glow plug broke in half in the hole on my A4

"This repair does require that the g.p. is not stuck or broken off in the head."

It's broken off in the head AND I drilled into the head a little bit. Sorry but I don't see this working lol

Joester said:

Anyone know the tap I would need to retap glow plug threads? What size and thread tap is it?

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This answer is in the link that Dan posted

Oh lol okay I get it now. Thanks, haha

I was like "this dan guy doesn't know how BAD I screwed up"

Ok,

Here, I think is the definitive answer...

The 'Sticky' that shows the 'How To Fix a STRIPPED glow plug" does say that it is not for a BROKEN g.p.

When the g.p. is broken, you must remove the head, as the g.p. must be drilled through the middle of the g.p., then the element must be driven out from the combustion chamber side of the head. It's a bit tricky and requires a lot of patience and practice.

If you like, send the head and I'll fix it. I'll do a write-up and give the details.

Just in case anyone reads this thread after a search, I do have a complete tooling set which can remove a broken plug while the head is still on the car. It does depend on how much you boggered it up trying to remove it yourself.

Just joined the broken glow plug club myself today, three came out, fourth didn't lol.

Haven't touched it though so it's not a lost cause yet, busy reading up first before I get myself into bother.

My problem is that this particular plug is seized pretty solid, thinking I'll need to get the engine nice and hot and keep spraying more penetrating fluid on over the next week or so before attempting anything.

Got wingnuts how to bookmarked anyway

When I changed my glow plugs several years ago I used anti seize on the threads Then when I go to change them they come right out.

I swapped engines not long ago and the old engine had new plugs, they came straight back out easy. Same with the injectors but this one's a pita lol

One of the plugs wasn't even screwed right in, had to work it back and worth and use copper grease to finally get it in right.

The other two were fine but this number four, talk about tight! I'll get it out yet though.

DanG144 said:

There is a head in the shop right now that has two glow plugs that are not cooperating. When using the recommended 25 ftlbs of torque at first one would budge and one would not. After two days of soaking with KROIL, one will turn about 1.5 turns the other about .5 turns before they reach 25 ft*lbs.

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That (35 Nm for my GP) by the way is the "failure moment" or the maximum. I set my torque wrench lower to be on the safe side.

I had a spark plug react like that on my other car. Using penetrating spray, I worked it back and forth very gently till it came out with zero damage to the threads of the head. What a panic though as it was the first of twelve plugs thinking they were all going to be like that; luckily the other eleven came out normally.

I removed the GPs on my new TDI, cleaned the threads and applied Beru Glow Plug Grease to them just to avoid future headaches. Torqued to specification (15 Nm). I'll be doing that every two years.

I also bought the Beru reamer to have on hand.

Nothing like preventative maintenance. We do that on aircraft for a reason.