<VV> Rebuild II

[Tony Underwood]

At 02:51 hours 01/16/2006, Stephen Upham wrote:
>Had a bad Corvair day today.  After all the blood, sweat, time and 
>money that I (and others) invested to get this engine rebuilt 
>(twice) not to mention the brake overhaul, gas tank replacement, and 
>steering system work, I've been gut punched by something as simple, 
>yet daunting, as a broken valve cover bolt broken off in the head 
>that, despite all of my efforts today (three trips to Home Depot, 
>one to Auto Zone, one to O'Reilly, and another to PEP Boys, five 
>broken drill bits, and two broken bolt extractors for a total of six 
>hours labor) finds the bolt (what's left of it) still firmly 
>attached to the head and apparently ready to resist all efforts to 
>remove it short of drilling it out and destroying the threads on the 
>head in the process.



Find a fellow somewhere with a small MIG welder and have him weld a 
nut to the broken end of the stud.   If he's any good at all, he 
should be able to do this.

I've not seen a broken bolt stud that couldn't be salvaged like 
this.   It might require the application of some heat on the area of 
the head where the rocker cover capscrew broke, but you should be 
able to get it out once you weld a nut onto the broken stud and apply 
some heat and some "rocking" of the nut back and forth to loosen the 
broken stud.     Not a huge amount of heat is needed, just enough to 
break the oxidization loose; a butane or map-gas torch will 
do.   Cheap at any larger hardware store, if you don't already have one.


I've seen people do preemptive strikes on heads by replacing the 
rocker cover screws with stainless steel studs, and use brass nuts 
(costs less than 10 bucks for everything at your local hardware 
store) to secure the covers.   No more issues with having the 
fasteners ever stick and/or break.



tony..