I was changing out the water pump in my car and I busted off a bolt in the aluminum block. So, I tried an easyout. After breaking that thing off in there I decided to weld a nut to the little bit of bolt that was sticking out. The result is now a bolt that is completely flush with the block and it has an easyout broke off in it.
I'm thinking of just putting it back together and hoping that it doesn't leak with the one bolt missing.
Does anyone else have any other tricks up their sleeves?
More successive drilling, pray to goddamm god you drill *straight* and fairly on-center so's you don't screw up the threads, and eventually "peel" off what's left of bolt in the aluminum hole, mebbe clean out what's left w/ a tap, at that point.
Also can use concentrated nitric acid (bomb quality ), which dissolves Fe but leaves Al alone. Can try that now, or proly better after drilling, say, a 3/16-1/4 hole thru a 3/8 bolt. Others have said this works, and chemically it is entirely valid, but I tried it once for a 1/4-20 tap that broke off in Alum, and it didn't work for me--coulda been shitty nitric, could be some steel alloys are more resistant than others, dunno.
See the threads here on PB Blaster, Kroil, etc, for the *next* time.
Ahm not an auto 'spert (or any kind of spert, except on things like Harold bein a spineless moralistic turncoat asshole), but you can also try the fellows at rec.autos.tech.
Nothing easy about a E Zout IME. Try welding a washer to the stub then a nut on the washer. Someone else might have a better strategy. Oh yea toss whats left of the EZouts, DE
I did the same thing on my cast iron Jeep engine, but there was just enough bolt sticking out that I was able to weld a nut on with a mig. I have read in an old Lincoln welding book a technique for removing bolts that are broken off below the surface. This book said to use a stick welder, and to put the electrode down in the hole, and build up the weld until it was far enough above the surface to weld on a nut.
I don't think you will get away with leaving one bolt missing.
WHen that happens to me, I drill the broken bolt with 1/2 the dia of the bolt. By all means go slow and true! Tap in a flathead screwdriver bit that fits to a 3/8 ratchet, tap it in tight. Apply small heat to the AL , hope to hell it turns out, 9 X out of 10 this works for me. Searcher
i was wondering if you guys put grease on the (new) bolt(s) when you reassemble it so that it can't happen again. when i reassemble stuff with steel bolts into aluminum castings i put grease on the bolts but i'm wondering if that's a bad thing to do. so far as i know the bolts that i've done this to haven't worked themselves loose, i torque them down to the specified values, etc. i always figured it was water getting in there that caused the problem to begin with, either that the water caused the aluminum to corrode and locked the bolt (with that white aluminum corrosion frazz) or there was a galvanic reaction between the steel and aluminum that corroded the aluminum and created that white frazz that locked the bolt.(?)
Last time this happened to me was on a water pump change for a 262 V6 GM (same as a V8). I put it back together with the 3 good bolts and it was fine for another 120K miles, when I sold the van.
You have to assume that bolt isn't coming out, so forget more welding, etc.
Create a decent center dimple on the stump by cutting crossed slots with a Dremel type cutoff tool. Use a hand drill to drill out enough to get a thread repair tap and coil in there.
I was surprised at how easy it was to break the EZout. I've heard the straight, tapered style are better. Does anyone have any experience with this style?
I work part-time as a shop tech at a Medical Supply house.
Sunrise Medical, the makers of the Quickie wheelchairs, have a bad habit of using hardened socket-head machine screws to fasten aluminum assemblies. After a few years, these screws can become almost impossible to remove due to the corrosion between the steel and aluminum.
Sunrise isn't the only maker that does this, but they're the biggest one. I've often asked their tech support folks whether their engineers have ever heard of galvanic corrosion or metal galling.
A good demonstration of GC is to use an aluminum patch for a hole in your car fender. DAMHIKT!
IF I _do_ manage to get them apart, when they go back together, there's a healthy dose of Never-Sieze on the screws. I haven't yet had one of the screws loosen, but they're easily removed the next time the chair comes in for service.
Get thee a set of left-hand twist drill bits for this job. The torque and heat from drilling has backed out stuck bolts for me in this situation. Worst case, you still have a hole, so you're no worse off than with a right-hand drill bit.
But yeah, keep it straight. Make a guide to help with that, maybe?
anti-seize is made for this, isn't it? You know, the grey "jumping grease" that gets on _everything_?
The nitric acid won't work unless you can change it out regularly (it weakens as it reacts with the iron), and you're willing to wait a few days as it eats through the eazy-out.
Too late now, but he would've been better off just drilling out the bolt and putting in a helicoil. Once a steel fastener rusts and seizes in aluminum, the chance of getting it out cleanly is somewhere between slim and none.
The real problem here is the busted off easyout (should be called a nowayout). I would suggest a carbide drill - the 'tipped' variety - usually sold to drill concrete or rock. With care and a little luck it will eat the easyout for breakfast. A solid carbide drill costs mucho and will break if you look at it the wrong way. Those damned easyouts should be outlawed! Around here we use aircraft-grade gasket goo. Liberally slathered on the bolt it will prevent seizing even when the assembly in routinely submrged in salt water!
I recently helped a guy change a clutch in his pickup. There was a steel stud thingy that was the pivot point for the clutch fork..and he had managed to beak off the end of the stud thingy in the bell housing. So I went in with an endmill with the side flutes dulled on a belt sander and face milled the stud flat (drill motor), then made up a steel rod a smide smaller than the hole, drilled a hole through it and stuck in a piece of heat shrink tubing, then stuck a 6011 rod down the heat shrink, put the rod down the hold until it was on top of the broken part and fired up the welder, then pushed in the electrode until it arced and then welded for a second or two. I then used a slide hammer to pull the rod and busted thingy out. Worked slick.
(insert diety of your choice) was with us.
Gunner
"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules.
Think of it as having your older brother knock the shit out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner
I always use copper never seize when putting car stuff back together. Course..I have about 20 cans of it
Gunner
"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules.
Think of it as having your older brother knock the shit out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner
IMO ez outs should require a license to own. Yes the square tapered are much better than the spiral version. However you still have to know how to use them and it's not as ez as people think.
First off with the aluminum job you're in a bad shape. It's probably possible to get it out but it will not be a easy job. I've had people bring me these in after spending two days drilling on them making the biggest mess you've ever seen. I pulled at least 5 pieces of broken drill bit points out of one these (many of them going off at every angle imaginable into the aluminum). Took me 1 1/2 hours to do what should of been a 15 minute job just because they tried to do it themselves.
Since you've got the easy out stuck in there you're limited on what you can do. The best method would be EDM but it can be hard to get the piece off and find a place who will do it. The carbide drill suggested by another poster is another possibility. However the likely hood of being able to do it with a hand drill is low with it on the car and not messing up the aluminum at the same time. It will probably take a good many of the carbide bits to get it done as well.
A carbide burr in a dremel at low speed is actually one of the better ways to go if you don't have the skill to weld to the easy out and get it out of the bolt. BTW you really need to use stainless to weld to the easy out. Mild steel rod has a low chance of ever getting a good hold on the high carbon steel in the easy out.
As for the bolt in the aluminum remember two things. Heat is you friend in a case like this and patients is a virtue on a job like this.
Don't get in a hurry.
Don't put to much force on a easy out. If the bolt didn't come out with the full size of the bolt turning it then the small size of the easy out isn't likely to do it either. Easy outs are for bolts that broke when tightening or broke because of to much force was put on them. Not for bolts that broke because they wouldn't turn when trying to remove them. For those kinds of bolts then something has to change before the easy out has a chance to work. Either the piece is heated to red heat (not possible on aluminum) and allowed to cool or some other thing has happened to loosen the stuck threads.
The way I would of gone about trying to remove this bolt is that I would of first welded a washer on it (preferably with stainless rod). Then I would of welded a nut on the washer. Then I would of heated everything as much as I could without melting the aluminum and allow to cool. Then I would of tapped on the bolt/nut combination to try and get things broken up a little (note tap not hit, small hammer light blows). Spraying with a good penetrating oil may or may not help but it rarely hurts. Carefully try to work the bolt back and forth. Just trying to unscrew it rarely works. You need to try and break up the corrosion in the threads. Wiggling a slightly loose crescent wrench back and forth on the nut is a good way to get the light blows needed to work it loose. If you can ever get it to move slightly back and forth then the odds of you getting it out are pretty good. Just keep working it till it moves more and more. Once it starts moving keep blasting it with penetrating oil to try and work some into the threads. It will most likely come out if you keep this up and don't get in a hurry.
If the bolt never does move after a good bit of careful working back and forth then you can try with a little more force. Slowly working it back and forth with more force till it either moves or the nut breaks off the bolt. In which case you've got two choices. Welding another nut on the bolt (in some cases it may take a dozen tries before the heat of welding and the working causes the bolt to finally come free) or you can drill it out. This is hard to do for many since it's really hard to get in the center of the bolt when drilling. Start small and work your way up through the drill index till you just start to see threads on one side of the hole then stop. At this point depending on how accurate you drilled the hole you can start working on picking the threads out or you can start working on getting the rest of the bolt out to the threads with a carbide burr in a dremel (the last is the most likely scenario). For the most part I don't recommend using a tap to get the remaining threads out. There's to much chance of the tap getting bound in the hole and breaking. With care it can work but even with care they will sometimes get bound up.
Wow that's rather long and rambling. Hopefully somebody will get some good out part of it. This a subject that hits close to home since I'm usually the one everybody brings these things to after they've already made a mess of it. It's much easier for me if they just bring it to me in the first place.
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