I recently broke the back bolt/stud of my thermostat housing on my TPI. I had the stud removed and tapped. I've just finished some mod work and now the thing is stripped again. Would it be better to buy a new aftermarket intake, or try for the tap thing again on the stock intake? If aftermarket is the way to go, does any one know of some good aftermarket intakes?

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87 IROC z
5.7L 350
many mods.

 

Tap her again, or you can buy the Edelbrock base. Buy a torque wrench or a set of stubby wrenches or something too. I weigh 250 but I can still moderate my strength! (Just bustin' your *****, man)

 

You don't have to replace the manifold, unless you really wanted to anyways. Way I look at it, you have 2 solutions to this problem. You can try to find a stud thats another threadsize larger and then tap the manifold for that size. Or you could drill the existing hole out and use helicoil. Since it is not a very high stress/torque application, I think the helicoil will hold just fine. Try installing the coil with some loctite 271. Good luck!

 

Just a reminder, that you have to be very careful when torquing bolts and nuts with aluminum. As you have probably found out, one moment you'll be reefing on the bolt and next moment it'll spin like an airplane propeller. Though I will assume you were just torquing the nut on the stud, at some point the nut will cinch down on the stud and start to apply torque onto the stud. You REALLY don't need too much torque when tightening these nuts onto the stud, to get a good seal of the thermostat housing to prevent coolant leaking.

 

Same thing happened on my brother's GTA about three years ago. My grandpa had it helicoiled, and everything worked out fine. Don't forget the anti-seize compound.

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"Clear your mind, relax, and float downstream."