well after chasing down a major leak on the drivers side I discovered that I have a minor leak out of the passenger side manifold to head gasket. well when I was pulling the drivers side manifold off I had found most of the bolts were loosening up so I thought I would try to just tighten the bolts on the passenger side. yep most of them were loose. but here is the catch... I stripped out the threads on the head for both bolts on the front cylinder. this sucks. I know I should pull the head, re-tap the threads and go from there, but good god thats a lot of work, adn this is my daily driver. I thinking about trying to find a set of helicoils that are just a little bit bigger than my previous fubared hole so i can cut threads and insert the Helicoil to fix it. any advise? riht now pullingth head is NOT a viable option.

 

The helicoil for the stock thread size should work.

 

Slightly longer bolts may pick up good thread within the head.

 

already tried the longer bolt. no go. I work tomorrow so On thursday Ill get teh helicoils and give that a shot.

 

Helicoils work pretty well. A right angle drill might help if there's not much room to work in. You'll probably want to use a stop on the drill to keep it from punching into the water jackets.

 

well I go to thinking today, I have Iron heads, so why drillit out, then tap it, then put in a steel thread insert, when I can just cut new threads in the existing hole? I took the stud that stripped the hole to the auto parts store and found that it was a Metric thread, I believe M8x1.5 (does that make sence?) I then found that a 3/8 coarse thread bolt is larger than the origional stud, but close enough in size that I wont have to drill out the hole before cutting threads. I have been going slow, cutting about 1/8th a turn at a time before backing the tap out a bit, adn adding cutting ooil every 1/2 turn or so, and only have to cut about 1/16th inch deeper. But it started raining, so I am stuck inside.... Bummer...

 

HA! Fixxed.







Now I found out that the flange gasket at the y pipe is leaking..... This just never ends..............................................