petex

I was replacing exhaust gasket yesterday and I broke that rusty bolt.... There is still 3/4 of inch sticking out, so I still have something to grab on. The dilema is that one friend is telling me to heat it up with torch and then remove it, but other friend is recomending to not heat it up (because metal extends in heat), just wrestle it the old fashion way with lubricant, What do I do? I have manifold on 3 bolts, my car is freaking loud, smoke inside of car and no power.....

The question is, can I heat up the ALUMINIUM housing with torch?

87 TII, Black

apreludem

heating it up might cause it to "break" loose...might be easier to remove it after you have let it cool down. I would probably spray liquid wrench on it first and see if you can get it out without heating because i dont know if heating up the aluminum would cause damage or not.

Edit: i've learned that with my old car (87 rx7) the bolts break easy. I usually spray them down with liquid wrench and wait a few minutes before taking them out....then i replace the bolts with new ones just incase.

petex

yeah, the other three bolts I removed with my fingers after I broke them loose but that forth one (top rear - above previous exhaust leak) I couldn't move at all... After 1 hour I removed pipe from floorjack, put it on snap-on ratchet and did like 10 turns and then snap!!! I did 5 turns with nut only and 5 turns with bolt. Then I took WD40 and removed nut from that broken-off peace and 2 threads under the nut were completly stripped, so it needed to be replaced anyway...

liquid whench is some kind of lubricant I can buy in autoparts store?

thanx

DigitalSynthesis

Hehe, welcome to working on 15-20 year old cars... mine is a "mere" 14 years old and crusty as stale bread. Bolts, plastics, everything is brittle. Replace what you can afford to, but I agree: liquid wrench is a life saver when it comes to these vehicles. That, and an air wrench, a Metrinch set (INVALUABLE for getting rounded bolts off), and a good piece of pipe that fits over the handle on your ratchet. Over the past few months I've also collected a number of taps, screw pullers, and specialized dremel bits too.

Oh, and yes, you can certainly get liquid wrench or the equivalent P.B. Blaster at any autoparts store. WD40 is useless for this kind of stuff and don't let anyone else at the store tell you otherwise. I've learned that one the hard way.

And yes, heating it can help, if you've got your wiring out of the way ... but I just filed them down and put a set of pliers or sockets on it. Usually that works pretty well after a good coat or two of liquid wrench. Be sure to smack it good after spraying it well... the added vibrations do help it penetrate better - that's not just a silly suggestion on the can. Go buy new studs and nuts, and if you need it, the housing too.

Although, I don't think your manifold leaking is resulting in loss of power, but I don't know everything.

petex

I'm loosing presure there, my turbo cant spool fast enough, of course I'm loosing power, I see almost no boost :-) This is not strange to me, I've got worse problems before, the thing is that today I couldn't work on my car (too many cars in my friends shop- he's the one who want to heat it up :-) ), so I wanted to see what other people do, especialy befor I apply heat from welding torch onto aluminium housing!!!

The heat is gonna be the last option, I'm not gonna f*&k up my nice ported & polished housings......:-) Unless someone who uses this technoque tells me to do so....

RETed

I don't understand - you were removing exhaust gasket, but you're worried about aluminum?  What part is aluminum?  The exhaust stud on the rotor housing???


-Ted

DigitalSynthesis

Completely missed the part about the turbo... my bad. It WAS ~5am....

petex

Yes Ted, it was stud on rotor housing, usually they hold the manifold...

Well I took it of no problem, no heat, just WD40....easy!

jimmyv13

Might be a good idea to replace all 4 studs...since you've already snapped one, the others are just as old and you never know.