flashkl

I drove to manhattan and back yesterday (about 250 miles give or take) and this morning I was about a half quart low on oil. I was able to narrow the leak down to the oil pan, and since the first owner who supposedly rebuilt the engine apparantly did it while on crack I went to check the oil pan bolts figuring that one or two might be loose. Well, the first one I checked, I put the socket on it and turned it lightly and the bolt head completely sheared off. Theres no bolt sticking out of the block at all, and what's stuck in the block is recessed. I'm thinking EZ out, any other ideas?

algranger

easy out sounds like the way to go to me.

abecedarian

so you went to torque the pan bolts, without a torque wrench?

flashkl

I went to see if any were loose. When I got my truck, the top alternator bolt was all the way out, the bellhousing was (and still is) missing two bolts, the tranny drain bolt was only finger tight etc so I thought, maybe, the pan was leaking because the bolts were coming out. Turns out the pan's leaking because one of the bolts was way too tight.

desconhecido

Be careful with the ez out. What are those bolts, 6mm? It's not hard to break a small screw extractor, then you're in for fun. You might consider drilling it out and using a helicoil.

abecedarian

If you have threads exposed once you get the pan off, you may be able to grab the bolt and twist it out with tongue-and-grove pliers (channellock for instance)

Don't drill if you don't have to- drilling in to use an ez-out, may cause the fastener to move even deeper.

flashkl

Obviously I wanna try to avoid destroying the original threads, so helicoil will be the absolute last resort. As for the fastener moving even deeper, I don't see how much farther it could go, seems like it is darned close to bottoming out. Unfortunately there's nothing protruding so I cant grab anything. I think the ez out may be the only option.

flashkl

Okay, so getting it out was easy. Drilled in to the center of the bolt and it came rigt out with the EZout. Put a new bolt in, so now the leak should be a lot smaller. Sometime soon, I gotta drop the pan and re FIPG it. For those of you who have done the job on a 3vze 4wd, I got a 4" diff drop so I should have enough clearance there, but I will have to swing the relay rod out of the way, yes?