As promised, I have made a little more movement with the Patrol engine but I'll be honest I have been terrified to go anywhere near this!!!
First things first, I bit the bullet and ended up purchasing this Laser Broken Glow Plug Removal kit. I'd watched multiple videos online and this seems to be a good piece of kit.
Quick measure of an old plug with the calipers told me that I needed to use the larger 9mm shouldered drill bit
Typically, the plug that has snapped hasn't got the best of access due to the rocker cover breather outlet being in the way, I suspect this is how I broke it in the first place as no matter how hard I tried I just wasn't on it true enough :doh Lesson learned :question
Rocker cover off then...............
All armed and ready as I thought I'd ever be I decided to start drilling and soon ran into another issue :doh
I managed to get about 2mm through the glow plug body material before I felt like I'd "bottomed out" on something. It appears that there is still a large amount of Ceramic tip still inside that the drill bit will not touch at all :doh :doh :doh I was drilling straight and true for a good few minutes and the bit didn't get any deeper, when I drew it out of the hole and inspected inside and on the end of the bit, I could see that I'd managed to generate the tiniest amount of grey dust that looked like ceramic swarf, the HSS bit is clearly not man enough to get through the ceramic tip........ DAMN
:nenau
I grabbed one of the old plugs and decided I'd go at it the same way I was attacking the one in the head but in the vice as to not do any unnecessary damage to the engine!!!
Low and behold!!!! The HSS bits hardly even break the surface of the ceramic
:banghead:
I left it there and cried a little that night :lol :lol
Luckily, my Uncle Elt had been down the motor factors on Saturday morn and found some Silverline ceramic drill bits that also had hex bodies that I will be able to slot into an extension bar still giving me the clearance I need to get on straight.
I'll keep you all posted with progress as I'm going to have another go this week hopefully :bow