Dan Bise

Wow, tremendous stories guys, truly excellent.

I, too, can vouch for Keith's patience on a job as he helped me with my TB and I've assisted him with one other. Compared to the bolt nightmare at dr.B's, those jobs were slam dunks but still had their own comparatively smaller challenges.

Having the right attitude is just as important as having the right tools. Keith and dr.B are great assets to our community to offer their time, tools, facilities and experience like this!

Dan
'83S
SOCAL928

dr bob

I know I'm a little late to the party, nut I thought I'd chime in with a few thoughts.

First is that Keith was definitely the hero of the day on Saturday. It was a very long day, it wasn't his car, and he was working in somebody else's garage with somebody else's tools. I counted more WP bolt stubs than I have fingers on one hand, and that doesn't include the stub that was drilled out, tapped and heli-coiled. Anybody that thinks that's "all in a day's work" has never suffered through seven broken bolts in one engine. The rusty bolts are a sign that the last time or two for the bolts didn't include anti-seize, pure and simple. It may also have to do with not using the torque wrench on the bolts when they were last installed. A lesson for both the DIY folks and the "pro" mechanics is that you need to use the anti-seize, and hand-tighteneing these bolts into aluminum isn't a real option. I shared the little torque wrench duty with the team who were observing the work on Rolf's car, and I'm sure they were amazed at how little the spec torque is on those bolts. Most folks would tighten until they feel the gasket squish tight or feel the threads stretching, unless they had the right tool for this. Threads never un-stretch, and the water pump grows faster than the bolts when it gets hot. Read this like a recipe for failed bolts, and you'll have a good picture of what not to try when you do any of this work.

A new 1/4" drive inch-pound torque wrench at Harbore Freight: $24
New bottle of never-seize: $4
Having all the bolts come out of the water pump with no heartburn: Priceless.

On Rolf's car, the bolts came out easily, but only after the balancer was freed up from the corrosion on the crank nose. The first 'hint' on the balancer was how much of a chore it was just getting the two pulleys off. We then tried just tapping the balancer, pulling on the balancer with fingers, pulling and tapping at the same time. No movement. After a lot of discussion, we decided to put the three-jaw puller on the balancer and put just a little tension on the puller. Tap a little, a little more on the puller. It was moving a little each time, evidenced by the ability to gently turn the puller bolt a little more after each tapping session on the hub. It took a while, but we were finally able to coax the balancer off. The corrosion on the crank nose was obvious. A little work with a strip of 220 emery and the crank was new again. A coating of Never-Seeze on the crank should make it come apart a lot easier next time. A little care from the last guy would have saved us close to two hours on Saturday.

We spent a lot of time working on Rolf's tensioner. The lower piston was seized in the bore, forcing me to drive it out from the back with a long punch and a 12oz hammer. The bore was a little rough where the spring disks rode, and between that and some possible corrosion of the aluminum bore, the bottom piston was just slightly larger than the housing. We mic'd the piston for round, and finally ended up wet-honing the tensioner bore enough to get the piston and new o-ring to pass through undamaged.

We noticed that the clamp on the old tensioner boot had never been tightened, and that may be why there was corrosion in there. A little water, especially salt water, would do a number on the internals of the tensioner. The old boot itself was in almost new, pliable condition. We changed it anyway. The two rollers and bearings on the tensioner arm are in like-new condition, so we cleaned them up and left them there.

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For the record, Rolf drove out of the garage at about 2AM on Sunday morning, and it sounds like he made it home OK. All the way across town to Burbank, about a 15 min drive on surface streets or a 15 min drive on the freeway, give or take. Still, it was 19 hours after he'd first pulled the car into the garage, way too long for one session and way to late to be working on anything like this. The girls next door said they'd been out in Palm Springs playing golf all day Saturday, and they slept through the 1:30AM engine start, the cheering, and the long engine warm-up time as we refilled and burped the coolant system.

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For the suggestion of a drill guide plate, it's doable. The key woule be to get some drill guide bushings with 3/16" and 1/4" ID, and the same OD. Have tjhe plate made with holes to accept the minor OD of the stepped bushings, so you could either bolt through the bigger bushings or drill through the smaller ones as needed. Swap the bushings in the plate as needed to drill out the broken bolt stubs. Use left-hand drill bits of course, and most of the bolt stubs would come out without tapping or breaking an easy-out off inside. I suspect that a kit with the plate, bushings, drill bits, and a set of 6mm tapered/plug/bottoming taps would be the way to go. I have Rolf's WP core here, and might be able to get a good transfer of the hole centers using transfer punches on a scrap of plywood or BMT board for a dimensional template.


Anyway, it's off to beddy bye for me tonight. I have some work to do tomorrow, along with some more tourist duty with my visiting mother-in-law. We went to the Tonight Show taping this afternoon, and tomorrow it's going to be a Disneyland/California Adventure day. It's really all we do here in California, play with our cars and friends, and go to Disneyland every day.


Sunday was a day of rest twice for me. I got up with Karen at 6AM, but took a nap after church from 11 to 3 before I tackled the mess in the garage. A couple hours and three loads of laundry later, the place looks somewhat like it did before we started. I found a few extra tools that will be returned to their owners, and discovered a few missing that will hopefully be returned to me. All the tools and equipment has been cleaned and put away for next time. I learned a lot from Keith, who has been through several more TB/WP projects now than I have. I shared a few tricks I'd learned when doing my belt last summer, and hopefully those will help him with the next car he tackles.

Bill Ball

Dr. Bob:

I've had most of those mishaps and challenges with water pumps and timing belts, just not all in one day! One 19 hour day! You should be given the Perseverance Award for 2006. Congratulations are not enough, but congratulations anyway.

IcemanG17

WOW
Two difficult TB's in one day...you guys are animals!! But seriously.....928ers willing to help another 928er is what makes this community so great!!

928ntslow

Having done a few TB's already, I thought we would pretty much breeze through the day. I thought that based on the condition of these 2 vehicles, they weren't floggers and the process would have been text book. No longer will I doubt that looks are deceiving.

I did manage to jump over to Rolfs car to give a go at the HB. At one point, I had both my arms/hands in there pulling on the HB, while two guys on either side of the car were tapping on opposite sides of the balancer...lol must have been funny looking, but we certainly weren't laughing. This thing wasn't coming off. I had suggested the pulley puller, but only to apply slight pressure and give a few taps to the HB to knock it free. Looks like they ended up doing that x 20. I saw the tensioner and it was not a pretty site. Bob had some good ideas to refurb the thing.

In retrospect, I look back and see that we could have saved a lot of time with Rons car if I had just flipped my middle finger at the stud and drilled the sucker out and re tapped. That would have only added a hand full of minutes as opposed to all the wasted time we actually spent. Rons tensioner and other parts were a breeze. All pulley's were in great shape.

I see now how Rolfs car was one little thing after another, it just showed it's ugly face in places where you just wouldn't expect it to. Seems Bob was getting hammered at one point with one thing after another, 4 guys standing around him, me bitching in the background and throwing him questions like, "Do you have a needle nose vice grip?" and his anxiousness to start cooking lunch! WHEW! I thought I had patience..HE won that award on Saturday!

It's actually a lot of fun working on these cars. Time factor is the only issue in most cases, that make it less fun. The challenge of uncooperative parts is part of the fun and good sense of accomplishment after you have beaten it. Helping these cars stay on the road and getting them up to the level they were intended to be is quite satisfying.

SharkSkin

Keith, Bob, by all accounts what you guys accomplished down there was nothing short of amazing -- you got the job(s) done despite several obstacles that would have had lesser men call a tow truck, you enjoyed yourselves, you came back here to share some nuggets that you've learned -- this is what epitomizes the 928 community!

Bill Ball

Keith:

I think you definitely made the right choice to work the broken bolt stubs out instead of drilling and tapping. Too many things can go wrong drilling and tapping. I wish I had been there to see how you guys do things. I agree every car is a new adventure, and you just keep learning new things each time.

dr bob

I suspect that we will come up with a procedure and maybe a "kit" of recovery tools to deal with broken WP bolts in the future. 7 Broken bolts was a lot. Keith was the hero on that side, that's for sure. The recovery kit needs to include left-handed drill buts, a set of following taps, a 6mm heli-coil set in case the stub and the drilling end up damaging the block. The ideal kit would also include a drill guide plate, with drill bushings that can be moved to any hole. The guide plate would minimise the chance of the drill walking out into aluminum. It would probably include a reversible angle drill to, so you won't have to pull the radiator for access. Oh, and a set of centering punches, and a Dremel to make the end of the broken stub flat for drilling.

We can package that stuff, along with a 3/4" bar, socket, and torque wrench for the front pulley, the 3/8" and 1/4" torque wrenches for the small stuff, the sockets and the end wrenches, the snap ring pliers for the rollers, the flat wrenches for the oil cooler lines, plus afew punches, screwdrivers, hammers, and a BF puller to help coax the balancer off. A can of PB Blaster, some WD-40, a bottle of Never-Seeze... This is going to be a big kit!

This job isn't something that should scare anybody. But having the right talent on hand, along with the right tools, made it possible to finish successfully.


If anybody has any questions about what we did or what tools were used, fire away. I posted a picture a week or so ago of all the tools used on my project last summer. We used a few more tools this last weekend, thanks to the stuck balancer and the broken bolts.

Bill Ball

Nice kit idea, dr. Bob! I do have all that stuff, although scattered.

No drill template, of course, but the old WP has served as a drill guide for me and did the job when I could not visually locate the center of the bolt.

I use a C-clamp to press in the plastic tensioner arm bushings. Handy if a vice is not available.

I like Time-Cert over Heli-Coil, although Heli Coils are fine for this use. Time-Certs are solid inserts rather than wire. They hold up better, especially in higher torque applications, although this certainly isn't one and the Heli-Coils are fine. One cool thing about Time-Certs is that they make a Big-Cert kit which uses thicker walled inserts - great if for some reason you mooch the first insert job. Also, their inserts come in a neatly boxed set with the drill bit, tap and a bunch of inserts. Fortunately, I have managed to avoid using them in the 928. One of my CBX motorcycles has 16 of them where the steel head studs pulled out of the aluminum case.

EDIT - Sorry, Time-Cert should be Time-Sert

dr bob

Great idea on using the old water pump. Maybe I need to find some drill bushings that fit in the water pump holes, or have a few made. I have the indexing punches that will do the trick with the pump as a guide. Using drill bushings means that the drill stays centered on the bolt stub, but it also means that you need to pull the bushing to clear the drill and hole fairly often while drilling. If the chips aren't cleared, the bit will snap of course.


Great stuff!


Good info on the Time-Serts vs Heli-Coils. There are a few industrial hardware places around that carry them, so no problem adding them to the arsenal. Hopefully I'll find the 6mm tap sets at the same time. I have pretty much everything else.

Jim bailey - 928 International

Bob,Keith, Bill , the Texas contingent you guys need business cards...." Have tools will travel " You donate your time talents to help a fellow owner save $1,000 or so. I sure hope that Karma is real ! You all deserve nothing but the BEST ! And for those not willing to rely on Karma there are always gift certificates available at 928 International how is that for self serving !

928ntslow

Always a nice thing Jim, but in all honesty, my reward is just being able to help someone out if I can. I know it sounds sappy, but I really do feel good when I can do for others.

As for the water pump kit, I think a thick sheet metal template could be made in the outline of the pump. The holes could have the bushings welded as Bob speaks of, but there is no reason why they cannot be smaller as in pilot hole sized. You would simply mount the template to the pump flange where the bolts have been successfully removed. This also acts as a cover to keep debris out of the water channels. Drill your pilot hole through the stud(s), remove the template/guide and then drill with your final bit size. Create your threads and you are good to go.

928drvr86.5

That is an awesome idea! I have not had a bolt break in two TB jobs and one bad water pump replacement on my 86.5 but i bet having one break just ruins your day, not to mention 5 of them breaking.

928ntslow

If the pump is replaced with the timing belt on a regular basis and new bolts are installed, one should never have an issue of broken bolts, providing they were torqued properly. Using anti seize insures this to not happen again. The only time I have known WP bolt issues to come up, is if the WP was not changed in a very long time. The bolts just plain corrode.

dr bob

The key here is to have the plate drilled for the OD of the drill bushings. You have two sets of bushings. Each bushing needs to be movable, so none are welded in. The OD of each bushing is stepped, so that the minor OD is the same size as the hole in the plate. There's a larger OD shoulder on the bushing that holds the plate in place when a bolt is used through the bushing. There are half a dozen bushings with 6mm ID, and they are a snug fit in the holes in the plate. They are used to hold the plate to the block, using the standard 6mm capscrews that would hold the waterpump onto the block. In addition, you have drill bushings sized for the drill needed for a 6mm tap (about 3/16" hole). This same bushing would be used to guide an index punch to get a perfect dimple in the end of the bolt. If you need to pilot the 3/16" (or whatever) drill for the tap, you'd want a few smaller ID bushings for that drill. Finding bulk 1/8" carbide bits is easy, so maybe the first hole is 1/8" pilot, then the tap drill size. 1/8" drill bushings, with the same OD's as all the others. With the bit well centered, and using left-hand bits, there's a large likelyhood that the remaining stub will come out with the drill. If it doesn't, you are in there with a small pick and a magnet, clearing the remaining bolt threads from the block. Clean up the block threads with a bottoming tap, and you are good to go.


Bill's suggestion about using the water pump itself is a good one, except that the holes in the pump won't accept a standard drill bushing. The pump is good enough to get an index punch to make a perfectly-centered dimple for starting the drill, though. It may be that an unrebuildable pump housing could be easliy modified to be the plate by just drilling out the existing holes to accept standard drill bushings. Otherwise, we'll need to have the plate made, or make one ourselves. A piece of alumonum plate maybe 3/8" thick would do the trick. A water-jet 'laser' would make a nice edge finish, but for a one-off a metal-cutting band saw would do just as well. It doesn't need to be real pretty, but it does need to be drilled pretty darn well if we want it to do the job.