1970 Chevelle SS 396 crank/plug problem!
Hey guys, novice car guy here. I think I made a pretty stupid mistake...... I'm not sure what the plug is called since it isn't for coolant but for oil, but i'll call it a freeze plug until somebody corrects me. SO, I have a 70 chevelle with a 396 in it, in which I noticed a little oil coming from the plug directly above the crank on the back of the engine. I don't have much knowledge of how engines work in general but I read about freeze plugs and thought "this shouldn't be too hard" and decided to try to replace the plug. So I tried hitting the edges with a screwdriver and hammer to make it pop out. ended up pushing the plug farther in all the way around..... So instead of realizing that I had pushed the plug up against the crankshaft, I just thought it had a lip on the back that I had pushed it up against. I thought I could drill a small hole into it and use a seal puller to get it out like some of the videos I watched had done, but all of those were for coolant plugs and not the plug behind the crank.
Long story short, I drilled into the plug but ended up drilling through and directly into the crankshaft about 1/16 of a inch, maybe a little less than that. I have two problems now. I took a small amount of metal off of the crank, and now my plug is sitting right against the crank and I have no clue how to get it out without ****ing up the crank even more. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated as I can't find any other forum posts about this specific situation. Is the crank ****ed now and out of balance? is the plug stuck?
edit: got the plug off, realized it is a cam plug. Damaged the outside ring around it. Is this fixable with the engine in the car?
Long story short, I drilled into the plug but ended up drilling through and directly into the crankshaft about 1/16 of a inch, maybe a little less than that. I have two problems now. I took a small amount of metal off of the crank, and now my plug is sitting right against the crank and I have no clue how to get it out without ****ing up the crank even more. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated as I can't find any other forum posts about this specific situation. Is the crank ****ed now and out of balance? is the plug stuck?

edit: got the plug off, realized it is a cam plug. Damaged the outside ring around it. Is this fixable with the engine in the car?
Last edited by PAsn0w43; May 21, 2022 at 6:39 PM.
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