So yeah.. started taking out the vacuum lines to replace them all with silicone lines and stripped a screw in the front. Any ideas on getting it out? Its stripped completely and conventional methods (heating and grinding) here are difficult due to space limitations.

--Andrew

 

a screw? what screw?

 

there are three Phillips head screws in the front and rear holding the vacuum lines down. I need to remove them completely as there are some underneath that need replaced as well

 

vice grips, pliers, whatever you can use to get in there and get a grip on the head of it. i'm assuming this is one of the screws on the rat's nest? if so, replace them all when you put it back together. don't use screws on it, they'll always get stripped out.

 

I assume you mean one of the solenoid rack phillips screws. Can you get a Dremel in there and grind off the head? Other than that I don't remember how tight it is in there, so I'm not much help. Iwas lucky when I did my hose job that I was able to get them all out w/o stripping any.

 

I had to remove the whole rats nest hard pipes and use an impact driver to finally do anything with the screws.

Dave

 

drill it out

 

I didn't have a problem with mine, but I'd probably just grab it real good with a set of channel lock pliers and go to town.

 

I thought there were also bolts holding the thing in?

 

This might be impossible to do with the rats nest still on the engine... but you could try cutting a slot in the head of the screw with a dremel or something else, and then use a larger flathead screwdriver to remove the screw.

I had to do this to get some of the fuel rail phillips screws out.

 

Take the whole thing out by unbolting it from the block. There should be three 10 or 12mm bolts holding it down under the coils. You will have to disconnect the fuel lines to do this, but IMO it's easier. Once you get the while thing out, replace the screws with something else. I used allen head screws instead.

 

I too am in the same boat here - except the previous owner seems to have had a crack at the screws and failed.

Just for clarification, are these bolts acutally in under the coil and thus can't be seen without taking the coil pack off? And by pulling the coil pack and then the three bolts the whole rats nest will come out?

Cheers

 

Yep, pull the coils and coil box.

 

lock one of these suckers on the end of it and twist, worked for me

 

Those philips head machine screws have Loctite on them from the factory. Do as the guy mentioned above, dremel a slot in the head for a flat screwdriver, then using one of those small butane solvering torches ( minature model dfound at Lowes ) heat the screw up and twist it out. If it were here it would be out in less than 5 minutes.


Later

 

I did mine awhile back. It started off as a PINA job just trying remove from the vac pipes one-by-one by attempting to unscrew the front/rear screws which eventually became stripped screws. But after searching (...a valuable good friend!), I found out and simply removed the entire rack all at once by unscrewing directly from the top block. Here are the Coil Pack covers and 3 screws Mahjik is talking about I took from back when I had changed mine out:

P.S ...be careful not to break the solenoids.

 

The best is to just remove the whole thing as stated but for the future i have used side cutters and point straight down on the head of the screw and get a good bit and twist i have busted loose the fuel tank cover screws that were rusted and alot of others that were striped.

 

I take the entire rack out of the car and do most of the vacuum hose job on a work bench.

 

^ I did too. If not, I would've visited the chiropractor a lot.

 

This method worked for me a while back. Clamp on tight and twist and then as Mahjik said replace them with some allen head screws.