Broken spark plug, chaos ensues.

After cleaning my carbs out and putting them back on my newly acquired 81 xj650 I realized I was firing 3 pistons instead of 4. So I start with pulling the plugs. One broke with the threads still in the block. I used my bolt remover bit and that snapped in two and that is also stuck in the engine block now. Aside from tearing the the engine apart any ideas?

 

Can you get some vice grips on the broken extractor?
Get some Aero Kroil and spray it up good. Let rest and soak it up again.

Sometimes cuss words help . . .

 

You'd only have to go as far as pulling the head off

 

Had that happen to me. It was no fun. Had to pull the head and take it to a machine shop. But on the bright side, might as well to a top end rebuild while your in there. Good luck.
Gary

 

I've removed hundreds of broken bolts in my life and I stopped using extractors after about the fifth one. The usual geometry of extractors actually wedge the broken screw/stud/sparkplug harder in place. They suck. Look at ANYONES collection of extractors and you're likely to see half are broken and the other half aren't ever gonna get used. The only good thing about extractors is that the broken bits usually come out fairly easy if you're lucky, and they're not buried down a well.

Penetrants, heat, center drills and reverse drills are your best friends when screws and such get broken.

 

Looks like I am gonna have to take the heads off. I used penetrating oil and the reverse bit. It wasn't budging even with a floor jack handle as a torque lever all I managed to do was almost know my bike over.

 

look on ebay, there's a bunch of them. try to get one with the cams. if it's that tight it might just bring the threads out of the head with the plug
there is a universal law that says if you have a spare, you won't need it

 

What Polock said, just get a spare head. I got one for my 700 for about $40 complete with cams. Course, I ended up buying a complete engine later on, so yeah now I have a spare I don't need.

 

I will hit the for classifieds and finish taking the heads off.

 

New head ordered, don't have cams with it but I am not worried as my bike only has 5068 miles on it. The cams I have are appearing to be in better condition than some of the ones that are for sale on eBay. I knew i would be dealing with a bunch problems with this bike as I only spent $250 on it but I am remaining optimistic that cleaning the carbs and the broken spark plug are going to be the worst of my problems.

 

Well, the logic behind getting a head with its original cams is that over time, the cams kind of "wear into" the cam journals. Not to say that one cannot safely swap cams between bikes, just that there exists the possibility of a little difference from one head to another.