While working on my manifold, broke the dipstick tube off. Read up on a lot of posts on how to get it out. Easy outs, screws and lot of other ways.
In the end, just got a piece of metal from Lowes. Its too thick to bend by itself, so heated it up a bit, flattened the end with a hammer. Stuck it in the tube, put a vice grip on the other side. Hit the vice grip with a hammer on the side and out popped the tube. Probably took me less than 10 min. No mess, no fuss.
Make sure not to bend the hook part too long, else you will not get the metal bar out again. You just want it to hook around the tube. Mine might have been a bit long, but with a bit of wiggling got the bar out again.

 

who put the "genious" in ingenious?!

 

Thank you.

 

Why did u flatten the rod? I had been thinking about finding a long enough bolt/rod to install into the tube. Then compress the dipstick tube with the rod inserted with your vise grips and then whack away hitting the side of the vise grips. I'm pretty sure that is what u were saying? The long bolt/rod in the tube would prevent the tube from collapsing when compressed with the vise grips. If u want to then reuse the tube then u could hit the bolt head sticking out of the top of tube. Then use a ratchet to unscrews the bolt. I wouldn't think it would produce any shaving particles, but u never know. I think I just re-iterated everything u said.

 

Had to flatten it a bit to get it through the tube.

 

That's the CSM method
The bolt need not be "long" - just enough to smash the tube onto
Getting a new one was no issue when they wrote that, nor was rust, evidently. If you yank on the top inch of tube like that- I made a puller that does exactly that w/o tube damage- sometimes the tube just breaks off at the block bulge.

the beauty of this here genius's tool is that it applies the extraction force to the BOTTOM of the tube, inside the engine. Can remove the broken off lower part as well. The only *possible* issue I see is if you have a Tough Guy tube, the wire might just split the tube and mangle in down inside the engine, then you gotta access it from below, which I guess you were going to have to do anyhow.