I have a diesel with 200k miles and up for a glow plug replacement. It is not something i have done in decades (did an 05 Chevy back in the day) nor do it have the time however each shop is warning me about risk of the plug breaking into the engine block.
Y'all had any experience with this and if so, how much work was required to remove the broken plug?

Sounds like they're trying to break it off, or preemptively anyway.


They make tools to extract broken plugs. It's not fun but not the end of the world either.

I worked on a texags guys LLY farm truck year that only had one working glow plug. Actually started just fine down to 60 F according to the guy. I also advised him about broken plugs, only to find the last guy that was in there had broken 3 plugs. I replaced 5 and he declined the extraction, and told me it started just fine in 40F.

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Y'all had any experience with this and if so, how much work was required to remove the broken plug?

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It depends.

akaggie05 said:

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Soak them with PB blaster the day before and work on them with a warm engine.

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Or a really cold engine.

I had two break off in my IDI years ago. I was in a crunch for time and money, so I left them in.... for several months. Then one day we had a real cold snap. I fire the engine up, and I heard it spit those two broken glow plugs out. I was a short distance from the house, so I just drive it home (not fast). It ran like crap and smoked like hell.

Moral of the story is not to buy cheap glow plugs (in this case Autolite). Stick with good ones that came with the engine