MachSchnell

OK, started (after a 2 month wait because I haven't been able to make time) installing my 944 racing SSK, pulled muffler, started with the 13mm tapered head bolt attaching the shaft to the shift rod. Seriously people, I'm not He-Man, and I certainly didn't brace myself against the car and pull with all my might, but the damn head sheared completely from the bolt. Lovely, huh? The one bolt that can't be removed out of the car. Anyhoo, borrowed a very good quality Snap-On extractor kit, spent hours drilling a pilot hole then enlarging it slowly to be as close to dead center on the bolt as possible, then went to town this morning with the extractors. Obviously I hit the bolt with PB blaster about 15 times from last night to this morning in the hopes of eating the loctite, although my biggest mistake was not wailing on that bolt with the PB before I tried to remove. At this point, the first extractor bottomed out on the shoulder and just kept trying to dig deeper - since they're tapered, I figured I'd remove it and go to the next size up to further reduce the chances of snapping the extractor in there. Now I'm onto the second extractor, which, after very slow, steady pressure, has almost bottomed out completely as well, and I'm afraid will just strip itself inside the bolt, or strip the bolt inside. My dillema is that, obviously ,the extractors aren't breaking the loctite, they're just drilling out the inside of the bolt. Being as this is on the shift rod, I don't want to just keep going to bigger extractors becasue eventually I'll hit some threads and we know that wouldn't be good so my question is...

What the h3ll do I use to break this friggin loctite? I'm afraid to use a torch because the rubber boot is still there, and the gas tank isn't too far away. I've PB Blasted the hell outta the thing. What else works in a jam like this? Any suggestions welcome. Obviously I REALLY don't want to drill the whole thing out because it's really hard to get a straight angle in there and I'm afraid I'd make a helicoil/equivalent a bit crooked, and I do not have the facilities or money to drop the transaxle just for this. I'm not too worried about driving the car, as obviously the might of men and technology isn't budging the freakin loctite, but if anyone has any suggestions I would LOVE to hear them!

TIA

Legoland951

Damn that's a tough one. I am not sure if you can get a hammer in there but if you can hammer what is left of the bolt with a heavy hammer in that very specific spot (without bending or breaking the surround parts), you may get lucky and break the loctite free.

Chris_924s

Oh baby.. this is gonna get ugly. You cant get enough torque on the leftover stud..

Face it Jason- you ARE the Hulk!

I hope you get it sorted out.

MachSchnell

So - not only did I get 1/2way through the 2nd extractor, I bottomed that one out, and moved onto a 3rd - unfortunately the 3rd got too wide near the shoulder and sheared not only the inside of the bolt, but also the threads on the shift rod. Well, not what I would have preferred to do, but I ended up having to drill it out and helicoil the shift rod (not exactly easy since the helicoil is almost twice the depth of the rod hole...thankfully the bolt bottoms out before the helicoil)...plenty-o-loctite on the helicoil and the 13mm bolt, hopefully it'll hold safely. I'm not overly worried short term for what I use the car for (short distance street use, mainly a work and back commuter) since the helicoil is only subjected to lateral loads, as is the bolt. All in all, it worked, and I must say, the SSK absolutely rocks, but dang, it should have been a 45 minute job and it turned into a 2 day fiasco!

You can bet that when I do a clutch job it'll be getting a brand new used shift rod from Ian's (who, btw, I forgot to laud in the initial post - despite my heavy handedness, I called Ian at 944online yesterday at 3:00pm asking if they had the 13mm bolt - not only did he have it, but he and Jamie were about to leave and were so kind that they waited for me for what essentially amounted to a miniscule sale just to help me out...I've praised them before, I've got to do it again, those guys are absolutely great people and I plan to give them as much business as I possibly can!)