Friend stripped his 250sx oil plug

[Tantrix]

Yesterday a friend's 250sx stripped it's oil plug, I'm guessing due to age and previous owner over-torquing it. Well anyway, he was bummed and we were pretty much ready to tear the engine apart to prep it for a Helicoil install when I found a bolt w/ a washer similar to the stock plug except it had slightly finer threads and was slightly wider in diameter.

He said screw it (literally) and we turned the bike over and I centered the bolt and drove her home with the ratchet. We ran it around about 5 minutes getting it hot and stopped to inspect around the new plug. He didn't have a drop of oil anywhere around the plug, not even a hint of a leak.


Story to be continued tomorrow...

[ATCnut]

You will have to see how well it works after you have removed and replaced it a couple of times.

Good Luck

[Tantrix]

Well, today we looked for a better fix. He still wasn't too enthusiastic about spending the cash on a Helicoil and drilling his case so we went to AutoZone. They had a Motormite M12-1.75 oversized self-tapping drain plug there so we grabbed it. I backed out the other bolt, then cleaned the thread area to remove any leftovers of the old stripped threads. I lined up the new oversized plug and drove it in with the ratchet. This one was much better. It tapped some nice deep good looking threads as it went in, and was able to be torqued to spec.

He ran it for about 3 hours today and right after he stopped and killed the engine we wiped our finger on the head of the plug and it was dry as a bone. Only $2.99 for the drain plug, and it did the job as advertised. After seeing how well it worked in his trike, I bought a couple for myself just in case.

I forgot to mention...the oversized plug was used with a new 12mm aluminum drain plug washer (stock Honda part) we picked up from a local ATV shop.