In a situation like yours I would make the top of the broken bolt is as flat as possible to allow the "easy out" to work the very best it can. You want the drilled hole to be perpendicular and as close to the center of the offending bolt as humanly possible. If you are off a little bit (a few degrees) you can turn this into a real nightmare! I put a centering bubble on my drill just to ensure that I get the hole right.

There are lots of people with their advice on removing bolts and how to do it. I am a believer in KROIL oil as it has never let me down yet. (I will have to try that combination mentioned above at some point as I have now heard about it several times.)

First get a good operable Fire Extinguisher and have it close by before attempting to use open flames around your car. Then get a propane torch or even a good heat gun would work. Heat up the area around the bolt as well as the bolt itself and get it good and hot. The oil should smoke (a little) when first applied to the bolt after heating it up. Be sure to get the surrounding area as well! Then soak it in KROIL and let it sit. Do this two to three times at least before moving on with the drilling. Time and Heat are your friends here, use them liberally. A lot of people don't use enough "time" and get in a hurry.

When you have a center punched mark in the center of the broken bolt then drill it out for the smallest Easy Out you can use here. I have seen way too many people use the largest Easy Out they can fit in the bolt and screw up the threads or worse.

I used to use a ton of Heli-Coils, they are a very easy way of making a permanent repair where needed. Do not be afraid of Heli-Coils, they are a mechanics friend!

Do not use a "breaker bar" when working on steel bolts that thread into aluminum. This includes Spark Plugs..... My good friend and A&P mechanic taught me to use "Anti-Seize" on any steel bolt that threads into aluminum. I now have a bottle of anti-seize with every socket set.

I wish you the very best of luck in getting this bolt out, if you take your time and be methodical about it you will have success.

I saw a guy use a breaker bar on a Oldsmobile QUAD 4 engine to remove one of the spark plugs. He was impatient and used the engine to heat up the offending spark plug. Just as you guessed as soon as he started using the breaker bar, it broke. The top of the spark plug sheared right off leaving the threaded part stuck in the cylinder head.

I hope that your new "find" is on the road again soon!

 

Well, I have a slightly different "first approach" to broken studs/bolts.

If there's enough sticking up, my first attempt is to take a die grinder with a thin cutoff wheel, or a dremel too with a cutoff wheel and cut a straight slot in the top of the exposed stud/bolt. Use lots of PB blaster or cutting oil/penetrating oil while you're doing this. Partly to keep the cutter cutting, and partly to penetrate the threads you hope.

After I've got a good slot in the top of the exposed bolt/stud, I heat the metal around the threads of what it's stuck in (the manifold metal in this case) with a torch. When I have the surrounding metal good and hot, I use a hand operated, hammer driven "impact driver" with a straight blade bit in the slot in the bolt. If the first few hammer blows to the impact driver don't break it loose, then I go for the welder and the oversized nut welded to the top.

BTW, the "impact driver" with a 6 point impact socket (and possibly a impact rated extension) are a good choice for trying to knock the stuck bolt loose after you've heated the stuck bolt with a torch. Often heat + impact will break it loose.

For a bolt that's broken off at or slightly below the surface of what it's threaded into, a different approach is needed. I prefer to sacrifice a torx bit and pound it in a hole drilled all the way through the remaining bit of the bolt that's still stuck in the hole. Then I use the hammer driven impact driver to turn the bit (and the bolt piece) after I've heated the manifold or whatever surrounding metal where the bolt is stuck.

 

^Expensive. Time consuming.


Weld a nut on, spin it right on out of there. I ought to make a vid, next time I have another exhaust manifold bolt broken off in a head....which won't be long.



.

 

I'm liking this idea. Do you put anything on the aluminum to keep it from sticking?

 

thanks for all the advice! I am going to call a local welder tomorrow to see about welding a nut on top of the bolt. To prep I may get a good torch and use it to heat up the bolt and manifold a few times, and soak it in atf/acetone mix. I figure going overboard on prep won't hurt anything. I'm scared of using an easy-out because of the possibility of damaging the manifold further.

Is it likely I could get the manifold too hot? I don't want to warp it, any more than I want to strip the bolt hole.

 

No point heating it until extraction time. The point of the heat is to expand the aluminum to help it let go.

 

If you don't want to go to the expense of an oxy-acetelyne torch, consider this one
You can pick one up for around $70. Trigger ignition, lock on and adjustable flame. The hose setup helps get in places easier too.

 

In addition, the act of welding the nut onto the stud will provide all the heat that you'll need. Weld the nut on good...hurry and spin it right on out of there.

 

I've got an impact gun-should I use that to spin it out? Or would it be better to use a long wrench (...or breaker bar...)?

How long should I wait after welding is done-the SECOND it's done, or give it a moment to solidify? I've never welded anything,not sure if it takes a second to harden or if you just go immediately.

 

When I do it, I try to get my wrench on it as fast as I can, after I'm done hitting it w/the welder. In my case, it MAY still be glowing red, but probably not b/c I'm working up in a fender well, I have to ditch my hood and gloves, find/pick up my wrench, fish it past the steering column, brake lines or other various obstacles to get it to the nut/stud. Anyway, I typically get it on the nut in ~10 seconds and start turning it. If I did a good weld and got good penetration into the STUD (the hard part), then it comes out. If I didn't, the nut twists off the stud and a get a new nut and do it again.

I try to get my wrench on it fast b/c the aluminum wants to transfer heat away from the your work so quickly. In 20 seconds, the work site (the boss and stud) are probably ~100-120*F which isn't "hot". The weld will have strength (solidify) basically as soon as you pull the gun away from it. Maybe 2 seconds to have full strength?

Oh yeah, Impact gun? I don't...for no great reason really. I personally want to "feel" how it's coming out, so I use hand ratchet driver. That way, if something goes wrong, like say I twist the nut off, I know how much tq it took to do that, and that gives me some info on how stuck the stud is, how good my weld was (or wasn't), etc. For ME, it just helps me be more in touch with the circumstance and my work.


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close end wrench tap tp tap loose a couple degrees then start working it back and forth. any corrocsion in the bore will slowly break down. dont use impact. it already sheared once, u r trying to work it out back and forth. use the penetrant. it will smoke even after the bolt isnt red anymore.

 

spoke to a local welder here today, he said if I bring the car to him, he's pretty confident he can do it for $20 unless it takes a lot longer than he expects. He said he will most likely weld on a washer first, then a nut, then he will use vice grips to wiggle it back and forth and break it free from the corrosion.

That sounds more or less like what people are recommending, and this guy sounded very much like he knew what he was talking about. I'll probably take it to him. Thoughts?

 

His idea should work fine. The price is about where it ought to be, and if he sounds comfortable, then you may have found your guy.

 

Meant to post this before-here's a shot of the bolt as it sits now.

 

Good pic. Ayuh....she's broken!

 

I also broke that bolt off about 15 years ago. I tried drilling it and then using an easy out. Of course I broke that off too. I bandaged it back together and drove the 3 miles to the local Chevy dealer and went home. Next day I get a call saying car was done and new thermostat installed. Cost $125.
No idea how they got it out.

 

Geez-that's not bad. I'd like to get it as cheaply as possible but even that's not bad.

For the future, I'm definitely using the 50/50 acetone/atf fluid mixture on stubborn bolts. I don't want to be in this situation again.

 

Use heat. Heat works. If you heat it it will come right out. Mixes and sprays can help but take it from someone who deals with this on a daily basis. HEAT WORKS. Next time, HEAT it.

And BTW you don't need a fancy or expensive torch set. ~$30 will get you a HANDY TORCH that will handle 99% of anything that the home tinkerer would need to do.

 

That too. Point is, I'm not going to get myself into this situation again.

 

FWIW, I use the 50/50 ATF/Acetone combination a lot. It's a good penetrant and will sometimes help free things.

One thing to note, you have to shake your spray can/oil can of that stuff very well right before you apply it. The two fluids don't mix, and they settle out within a minute or two.

Get a torch as well. Even a MAP gas torch is very handy to have, and heat is the best thing to getting stuck fasteners loose.

An impact driver tool (http://amzn.com/B01F5XOFFM for example) is also handy.

Oh, and when you reassemble that thermostat housing, use anti-seize on the bolt. I use Permatex 80078, and it's known as "robot snot" in my shop. If you want to be completely OCD, get some stainless bolts for that position, but you won't find a stainless bolt with the ground stud on top, so you'll have to relocate that ground wire to an alternate position if you do that.

Every bolt that goes into aluminum gets either anti-seize or some type of Loctite thread locker (usually medium strength in aluminum). No exceptions. Especially not where there's coolant nearby.