I must be the KING of breaking bolts. After cleaning out the cold start injector, and then reassembling, I broke off one of the bolts holding the injector to the air chamber! My torque wrench was set at 144 in-lbs or 12 ft-lbs and I thought I was well withing tolerance. WRONG! Before I heard the first click from the torque wrench, the bolt head sheared off leaving me a stud that was now flush with the air chamber.

After freaking out , I finally calmed down and was able to extract it with an Easy Out :bounce2:.

This time, I checked my FSM for the proper torque and it was only supposed to be 69 in-lbs, less that half of what I set my torque wrench to. I'm just relieved I didn't strip the aluminum threads!! This was a huge lesson for me. Always, check the proper torque before reassembling.

Anyway, I replaced both bolts with stainless steel ones and then torqued them to spec. I hope the steel ones won't be a problem with expansion in an aluminum air chamber.

Any thoughts about using steel bolts for this application?

 

Small bolts like that I dont even use a t-wrench.good thing you got it out

 

Yeah you don't need a torque wrench on something like that. Just turn the wrench until it is tight but not too tight. Hmm I've got studs and nuts to tighten my CSI...I guess that's one of the minor changes that Toyota made.

 

Did I ever get lucky. It would have been a really nasty fix because if it were drilled out for tapping, the shavings would get into the air chamber and that would mean pulling the air chamber off! I've learned my lesson well: Always check the FSM for torque specs, and do not guess.

 

I am the King of Bolt and Tool breaking. In fact I should change my user name to ToolBreaker - as it has become my nickname around local shops. My fault seems in breaking things trying to get them off however.

I drilled and tapped a sparkplug in the head while it was on the engine about 4 months ago- so far so good.

 

Do you know if you left metal shavings in the engine from the drilling and tapping (I'm sure there are, though)? Ouch! If there are shavings in there, that's probably going to take off thousands of miles from the life of your engine or more... just from all the dang scraping and gouging in the cylinder walls.

How many miles do you have on your rig and what year is it?

 

Its just aluminum proably just went right out the ext valve. I have had to do it but I tried to vacum the shavings out with the shop vac

 

Actually I'm pretty sure the threads are steel inserts. When you retap it, you can put grease in the grooves of your tap so that it holds all the shavings.

 

Hmmm... that's a great idea about putting grease in the grooves of the tap to hold the shavings from falling into the cylinder. Hopefully, I won't have that problem, but it sure is good to know that it works.