I had a similar but much worse thing happen to me:

I was doing a compression test with a crappy Autozone compression tester. The part that screws onto the end that goes into the spark plug hole to adapt to Honda size got stuck. I didn't realize this and I put the spark plug in and torqued it down since it fit perfectly in the adapter piece. Then I realized the spark plug was much higher, so I removed it and the electrode was completely mashed and now the adapter piece was torqued tight in the hole.

I tried all the right sockets to try and get it out and none of them would fit in the hole AND fit on the adapter piece, so I tried supergluing the end of the compression tester onto the adapter to try and get it out. Then, the hose got stuck and we had to twist it until it became a gnarled mess and eventually broke off.

Then, I had the brilliant idea of pounding the appropriately sized socket down into the hole to try and get the adapter piece out. It got stuck completely about 1/3 of the way down. So, now I had the adapter piece, part of the hose, and a 17 mm socket stuck in the spark plug hole.

I faced the inevitable: removing the head and trying to get it out the other way. 3 hours and two days later, the head was off and there was no way the piece was coming out without the aid of a machine shop.

So later that week, I took the head to a ghetto machine shop in Santa Ana. They could only remove the socket and charged me $100. They said to take it to another guy to remove the other piece that initally got stuck. $60 and a machine shop later, the pieces were all out and the head was ready to put back on the car.

So I put the head back on with my Cometic headgasket I ordered and got everything back to normal. It gets worse: when I put coolant in it, it immediately started leaking from the intake manifold because the old gasket is made out of cork and I couldn't completely get it off, so the new one didn't have a good surface to mate to. So, I figured I would try and get it to a shop to have them fix it. I started it up and immediately, the idle climbed to redline and oil gushed all over the floor.

3-1/2 quarts of oil on the floor, leaking coolant, and surging idle....I was about ready to blow the car up. I had it towed to my local mechanic but they wouldn't work on it since it was turboed. They said next door was an Acura specialist would look at it in the morning. He also wouldn't work on it, so I had it towed to a high performance shop to diagnose it.

They put oil in it and started it up and it gushed it all out. They later called and said they would charge me over $1000 to take the head off and see what the problem was and it would be in my best interest to have it towed home and try it again. So I did. That was after they charged me $50 to put oil in it and start it. Bastards!

At home, I removed the head and discovered something so horribly wrong! The headgasket was on upside down! I felt like such a dumbass because I invested about $300 at this point, 12 hours of hard labor to remove the head, put it back on and then remove it again.

It gets even worse: unknowingly, I reused the Cometic headgasket and put the head back on and then put coolant in it. It immediately leaked from in between the head and block. I was so frustrated at this point that I almost blew the f-ing car up.

Time to remove the head again. 3rd time is a charm, right? So the head comes off again. I am getting real good at this by this point.... I get an OEM gasket from Honda, install it the right way and double checked. The head went back on and I started it up later that day and it was back to normal. Yippee!

So, after two weeks without a car, $400+ dollars invested, over 30 hours of gruelling labor, my car was back to normal after doing a simple compression test that should have taken no more than 15 minutes.

The best lesson you can learn from this is to not buy cheap parts from Autozone and don't get any brilliant ideas of pounding sockets into your spark plug holes or supergluing anything close to the engine.

I had a strong urge not just to write a nasty letter to the makers of the garbage compression tester, but to drive down there with a ton of ammo and an AK47 and rid the world of the slimey mother f-ers. Luckily for them, I did neither.