I QUIT!!! ( for tonight anyway)

well after many attempts in the past 5+ hours and 3 rebreaks I give up for the night. This is a head on a 2000 5.4 Ford engine I rebuilt the bottom end on for some friends. the 2 back exhaust bolts were broken and I have found out it is a common thing on these engines. One of the bolts came out with a pair of channel lock pliers so it only makes sense that this one would be a very hard one.I tried welding a nut on spraying with wd-40 (thats all I had on hand) heating with a torch I can't find the brazing tip for this set of leads so I had to be very careful with a cutting tip still no good welded 2 nuts heated 4-5 times and now just about out of bolt so I think in the morning I am going to cut it off smooth and step drill it before I break it below the head and can't get a flat starting point. If I have to heli-coil it that's what I will do I did this job WAAAY too cheap trying to help some people and make a few $ too he and I are both out of work. Most shops in my area want more to just change the engine than I am getting for the whole pull-rebuild-reinstall. HOW DO I GET MYSELF INTO THESE SITUATIONS?????????

use a wirefeed welder if possible when welding the nuts on. seems to work good for me

A sucker to help friends in need like many of us?

that's what I used

I know how you feal. I have been there before. I recently had 5 broken ex manifold bolts on a fore v8 industrial engine. I blew the broken pieces out with a cutting torch. It can be safely done. This is possible if the head is cast iron. The cast iron will not be damaged. You just have to go in quickly get the broken stud hot and blow it out. Then clean up the thread with a tap. Then drilling is another option as you mentioned. Stan

They make a special coated rod for a stick welder for welding on nuts to broken engine studs. It won't stick to the cast iron. They say it really works great. Never seen it done just seen the rods a salesman brought into our shop one time.

Roy, there are many ways you can probably remove the bolt but here is the way I have done it and had much success. This will work easier if you have some bolt sticking up but is not 100% necessary if you can weld a nut to the bolt. What I do first is heat the bolt ONLY and get it red hot, letting it cool naturally. I then heat the casting AND the bolt and when both are hot I take an ice cube (be careful doing this due to the heat) and cool THE BOLT ONLY. More often than not you can remove the bolt very easily when everything cools off. It seems when you heat the bolt only first it will try to expand in the hole but can't which actually contracts it. When you reheat it and rapidly cool it it contracts even more. I've never had this fail. Hope this helps. Mike

I have a friend from school days(40 yrs ago) that is an engine rebuilder machinist. He told me long ago(and it works) if the stud is still long enough to heat it red hot and let it cool(COLD) if it still won't move repeat--and repeat--and repeat. If it is close to flush then weld a flat washer to it then weld a nut on top. No impact to turn use a wrench(for feel)just red hot and let it cool cold. May take time as in 4-5-6 attempts but it works. He has been flat rate repairs for 40 years and doesn't fail often.

Weld the thickest , proper size, flat washer to the stud. An example would be a 5/16 washer for a 3/8 stud if it is flush with the surface. Use a 3/8 washer for 3/8 stud that is protruding. After this, weld a nut to the flat washer , welding on the flats of the nut.
Let it cool completly! Then use slight back and forth motion tightening and loosening.
I have removed hundreds this way.

Sometimes it is best to quit while you are ahead and let a machine shop with the proper equipment remove the broken bolt for you.

Having been the poor machinist that has had to fix stuff like this before, it is easier to let the machine shop try to get it out from the beginning than to try and do it yourself, because often you just make it worse.

Last fall my dad and I fixed the exhaust leak on his 1995 F-250 w/ a 460. We pulled the heads from the get-go instead of trying to fight the broken bolts ourselves. The $20 per bolt for a local machine shop to get the broken ones out was well worth it.

If you spent 5 hours on one bolt, letting someone with an milling machine and a carbide endmill tackle it would be well worth it.

Some of the hardest things I ever had to fix were broke off bolts in aluminum.That white stuff gets set in there like concrete.If you can get the bolt hot and let it cool off good,it might come loose.You will have to work it both ways,if it moves you can get it.Just move it each way squirt with penetrating oil,heat.If you have room,you could weld a piece of flat metal on it with the wire feed instead of a nut to make a handle.That way you can see better if its turning or twisting off.Dont twist it off,just move it a tiny bit both ways until it loosens up.It has to move,and you might have to heat it several times to get it to move.Drilling a hole completely through it helps to get heat all the way through the bolt which is important.If you can get that whole piece hot all the way in,and not melt the aluminum,it ought to come out.You have to be careful not to melt the aluminum,but it has to be hot and cool off so it stretches that white stuff and releases the threads.You could try hitting it with an air hammer,a hammer and chisel,punch.Maybe even cut a slot in the top of it and try a screwdriver.Try to tighten it first a little.Its hard to get them out but if it moves you can get it.You just have to let it cool off before you try to get it out so you dont tear a chunk out of the head.Try and concentrate your heat only on the bolt because you cant tell when aluminum is too hot,it just discolors or melts real quick with no warning.You have to be patient.You already know its not going to come out quick.All the time you spend on this will teach you how better to do it the next time.Exhaust bolts get hot and cold their whole life and it makes them brittle.Its hard to get a brittle bolt out of aluminum if its stuck,but it can be done,usually not very fast.Hitting it with an ice cube sounds like a good idea,especially if you have a hole drilled all the way through it.

I've got bolts out by sharpening a drill bit backwards and drilling in reverse. The heating and everything else that led up to this last desperate step may have been the ticket.

Good Luck and Merry Christmas.

Dave

i'd sure like to see a pic of that drill bit sharpened backwards....

(quoted from post at 04:14:00 12/23/08) i'd sure like to see a pic of that drill bit sharpened backwards....

Click to expand...

I don't have one as it was a long time ago, but if you look at a good bit (tip up), it slants to the left (cuts clockwise).


here's a store bought one:
http://www.mytoolstore.com/hanson/hanson.html



I just ground it to where it slanted right (cut counterclockwise). This was just a soldier's last ditch chance to avoid stripping a whols nose off a vehicle and doing a bunch of paperwork to send the work to another shop (where it would take several weeks and have to be assembled by me afterwards). Just happened to work on several occasions. When the Hummers first came out, they were real bad about generator mounting bolts busting off in the cylinder head. With over a hundred of them in the inventory, we got plenty of practice.

Dave

Do you have the heads off ? If so put them in a milling machine and bore that bolt out.

You can buy left handed drill bits. Sometimes they help.

I have had good luck on Ford, Chevy, and Dodge gas engines with broken off manifold or power steering bolts, blowing them out with a cutting torch.

It takes a lot of faith in the process and the willingness to sacrifice a cutting tip.

On a 720 gas John Deere exhaust manifold bolt,
the cutting jet cut a vertical groove down through
the threads, but the new bolts have held without incident for 5 or 6 years.

me too

aluminum head.

I figured they hadn't read the previous post but would catch up in a few

Roy, I've got the same problem with my 2000 ford f150 with the 5.4L. You hear this cackling sound on startup from the right side. When it warms up, the manifold expands and quits leaking. Ford shop said it was a common problem on the 5.4 particularly on the rear studs.

They told me there is no big hurry to fix it unless it doesn't seal off after getting warm. Price to fix varies upon if they have to pull the manifold and if the head is broken off and they have to weld on it.

If I could figure out how to get the wheel well shroud off so I can look at it, I may fix it myself this spring.

Mine also has the intermittant odometer display. Cause is a cold solder joint on the back of the instrument panel. Haven't worried about it enough to pull the dash and panel to fix it.

Another common ford pickup problem mine had was the rear sliding glass window frame cracking and leaking. Only way to fix it is to replace it which I did.

don't know if you read my later post but I wound up drilling it out and putting a heli-coil in