Last November I decided to tackle my Speedster's intermittent turn signal and weak brake light problem. It turned out to be corrosion on the wiring harness connections between the turn signal switch and the main harness, but that's beside the point. The fix was easy, but I had disconnected the coil wire so I could have the ignition switch on for an extended time while I diagnosed the problem.
With the brake lights and turn signals working, I tried firing up the car for a drive. It wouldn't start. I tried to pull a spark plug to see if it was wet or firing and the Helicoil in the head came out with it. At about the time I got the plug+helicoil out I noticed the coil wire was off. I smacked myself on that flat spot on my forehead, but it was too late by then.
In desperation I tried a Helicoil Save-A-Thread but I wasn't real happy with the way the plug felt when I screwed it in.
http://www.amazon.com/Heli-Coil-R532614L-M14-Sav-A-Thread-Long/dp/B000BOJ79K/ref=pd_sim_263_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=0VTDPC67FCTAPY6K3SB8
By this time I had been unable to drive the car for a month facing having to yank the engine out because of a single corroded wire under the dashboard. I was pissed off to say the least, but I took the engine out, took the head off, and found this:
Save-A Thread is supposed to work great, but I used it according to the instructions and it left all this metal in the cylinder.
I sent the head to CE Engineering in December and Walter welded the spark plug hole and got the head back to me, looking beautiful, in a few weeks.
By this time winter had set in and there was no way I was going to work on a cylinder head when it was 20 degrees outside. It's not the kind of work you can do with mittens on. Over the course of the winter I had to fix a snow blower and I don't know what else and the carefully arranged valve springs and shims got scrambled.
So I couldn't just put the head together and put it on, I had to borrow a spring pressure gauge and set up the head from scratch. It's been a while since I've done this and what with beer breaks and happy hours it took me a whole weekend to install four valves.
When I got the rocker assembly back on and set the valve lash it was somewhat gratifying to find the clearances were pretty close to what they were before I took the whole thing apart.
While putting the sheet metal back on I broke the oil temperature sender. A new one from out host is $196. I'm searching for an alternative. (anyone got a used 6 volt VDO oil temp sender?)
But now the car runs. I took it for a drive last weekend. It will still do 100 mph and it is a hoot to drive. It sits at the front of the garage now, right behind the door, ready to go. But geeze, it has cost me 8 months and almost $800 to fix a corroded connection in the brake lights.
