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Broken bell housing bolt and now i've compounded my problems
Any suggestions on how to remove a broken bolt with a broken extractor in it would be great.
So, started out as a clutch job, in and out in a couple hours was the plan...now a month later I need to get this job done. All the bolts came off easy except one... it was just plain stubborn and then ended up snapping off a bit too easily. I ended up dropping the complete powertrain and drilling it out. This went ok, then like an idiot thought I'd use and easy out to simply turn out the previously seized bolt.. guess what? tapped it into place a bit just for a trial run and started to apply some torque to it..snap. like butter.
Has anyone run into this before?? what a pain in the ***. the gearbox is stuck on there pretty well and i cant pry on it without damaging some metal flanges. I tried re-drilling the broken easy out but its not going anywhere..
the broken bolt location of seized fastener broken easy out
Probably too late at this point but, PB Blaster is the best penetrating spray I've ever found for seized threads. I was told about it by an old farmer years ago.. He depended on it for his livelihood.
That is odd that the bell won't pull away.... the bolt is not screwed into the bell housing but only the block behind it. The bell is held on by the threads in the block and bolt top... which is now removed. What am i missing? It appears there is an odd torque on the system.
Easy outs are worthless. They’re supposed to be hardened steel but all that does is make them easier to snap off and then impossible to drill after you do.
After you pull the trans, I would suggest welding a hex head onto the broken bolt if there’s enough meat to weld to. Then hit it with a wrench. The heat of welding usually helps break the bond between the bolt and block, too.
it does seems strange for sure. only thing holding the trans on is the corrosion. I can get a bit of movement out of it since all the fasteners are off, but that's about it. I picked up a few grinding stones for my dremel today. 45minutes later it seems a bit of progress has been made. a bit hard to tell from the pics, but here you go.
after we snapped it, it was soaking for a few weeks with some Wurth pentrating oil. trying to free it up, but no luck. Once (IF) the gearbox comes off I feel like the threads in the block will be fine..maybe i'd be able to turn them out by hand .
Off to Lowes again for another pack of grinding stones.
Yeah, easy outs are almost always a bad idea. They are hardened steel, so busting one keeps you from drilling it any further unless you get an expensive bit. I am surprised you couldn’t drill that completely out though.
Sorry for the lack of updates but I just got a chance to look at this again the other day and happy to report that the drive train is now in two pieces (as it should be for a clutch install).
I wanted to update this for the sake of others that go through something like this and for that fact that a rotary tool (ie: dremel) can be used to grind out hardened tool steel such as my broken easy out.
Total of about 2hours of grinding using a number of special grinding stones (#84922) and a tungsten carbide bit. Once the easyout was turned to dust I proceeded to drill out the bolt to a point where is was weak enough to wiggle the whole assembly loose. I made sure to use some GOOD titanium bits. I didn't want to break one after all this mess.
The reason that the bolt was corroded is a bit crazy though. it seems that an insect or mouse of some sort thought the bell housing was a nice warm and dry place to store organic matter, this must have been holding enough moisture and passed it on to the dowel and bore for the bolt! That thing was on there good! Now to get the rest of the bolt and dowel out.
I am pretty proud of my drilling skills now though
Probably too late at this point but, PB Blaster is the best penetrating spray I've ever found for seized threads. I was told about it by an old farmer years ago.. He depended on it for his livelihood.
01-05-2019, 01:52 PM
Broken bell housing bolt and now i've compounded my problems
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