Broken bolt in spark plug coil
 

Hello everyone. Been browsing these forums and they seem great. I have had my 2008 fit for almost a year now and ran into a problem that I am looking for opinions on.

I bought my fit with about 105k miles on it and ran it up to around 115k since then. I was pretty good about doing much of the general maintenance things you might expect when you buy a used card, changed all the fluids, checked brakes, replaced some tires, alignments, etc. The car runs great and haven't had any real problems with it outside of a battery replacement and a stuck trunk latch.

I hadn't looked at the plugs yet, so I decided to pull them today to inspect them. I guess I should have given the penetrating oil some more time because I ended up shearing off the bolt right where it goes into the head. Yes, I know, I'm an idiot. I had some of those EZ out bits lying around and spent some time trying to drill out the bolt and get the EZ out bit in. It was tough going considering the space limitations and I thought I was doing ok until I snapped the EZ out bit off in the bolt.:(

After all the fooling with it, I never even got the plug out because I didn't have the correct size socket to reach into the plug hole. I am guessing the plugs are going to need to be changed given how it looks like this area hasn't been touched in a long time.

This is the first car I've had that had an individual bolt that held the coil down for each plug. How necessary is it to try and fix this? The coil seems to hold sturdy enough without the bolt and it seems like an awful big job at this point to try and get that bolt out. Am I alright just leaving the one plug coil without a bolt? I didn't attempt the other plugs after the first one. I am going to let the penetrating oil take overnight at least to try and work itself into those holes.

Again, I know I am foolish and feel stupid for doing this. How screwed am I at this point? Thank you for your time.

You should pursue removal of the broken coil bolt as that provides the ground for the coil-pack.

Is the broken bolt flush with the engine? If not you have other options.

But if it is, I would start by drilling progressively bigger holes into the bolt with left-hand drill bits (these will try to unscrew the broken bolts).


Sorry for your misfortune.

Well I have been having a heck of a time so far. Got my hands on some left handed drill bits and a couple of cobalt bits. Made a couple of dents it looks like, but nothing is really getting through that broken EZ out. It is not protruded at all, in fact, the whole thing is recessed into the hole about 1/8 of an inch I would say.

Given my troubles so far and the job I still have before me, I am considering my options. I know I need to ground the coil, and given that this piece is really just sort of a clamp, what do you think about JB welding a little piece of a bolt on top of that area? That way the coil can slip over the bolt, and I can run a nut down on top of it. This would ground the coil and give a little more strength to holding the coil in place.

I know it's not ideal, but might this work for this purpose?

:bowdown:
this is NOT correct: the ICM in coil is grounded via black wire connected to G101 terminal; the wire is common for all coils. The bolt has nothing to do with the grounding :thumbups:

I stand corrected...


Sounds like another use for Duct Tape, in that case... :p


J/K

The hole for coil attachment bolt in the cylinder head is a through hole so it may be a good idea to inject the PB blaster into this hole (from the bottom) before removal of the bolt.
In many cases (except for studs threaded into exhaust manifold or if thread locking compound is used) once the bolt head is broken off the remainder part should not be tight anymore. If topic starter will try to remove it with left hand drill bit he may need to use right angle drill with 1/16 inch bit to start.

holding down coil pack
 

I'd suggest buying a longer 10mm bolt to hold in the adjacent coil pack plus an approximately eighth inch by inch by five inch piece of steel to hold down two coil packs. The steel piece will span the two coil packs with the bolt in the middle. This will work for three of the four cp bolt locations being broken.