What am I doing wrong??

Okay, so I snapped a bolt off for the thremostat housing. I get a set of extractors, drill the hole, tap it in, and it snaps. This is aggravating as this has happened to me before. I do as the instructions say, but it just snaps them off. What the hell??

They all do that, sir. Well, most of the extractors do, especially the cheap ones. That's also usually the point where you find out that they're made of harder material than the drills you have available.

Any chance you can weld a nut or three to the remains of the bolt?

In reply to BoxheadTim:

Nope. It's hidden in the confines of an Aerostar. It was also the rear bolt that snapped, making it worse. Plus they ran a fuel line right in the way. It snapped off right level with the manifold.

Oh crap . Can you get the manifold out?

If you can hold the manifold right you might be able to still weld a nut to it. If that doesn't work you might have to check if there's a local firm that can do spark erosion (well, that's what it's called in the UK) to essentiall 'burn' the remains of the bolt out.

The bolt itself is only about 5-6 mm in diameter. Not enough room for someone to weld anything to it unfortunately. I'm still looking over the situation as we speak, looking for any possible avenues to take with getting this out. It will spew antifreeze if this other bolt isn't in. So as it stands, the van isn't going anyplace till I get this fixed.

How much room do you have to work?

A dremel with a couple carbide cutting bits will remove the extractor. A right angle attachment or one of those flex attachments will let you get in there, hopefully.

I don't bother with extractors after a couple unpleasant experiences. It's way less worth to drill it out and helicoil or keensert it from the get go.

In reply to paanta:

Not a whole lot of room. The Dremel crossed my mind, but I don't have the bits. Looks like I'll have to go buy some then.

BoxheadTim wrote: Oh crap . Can you get the manifold out? If you can hold the manifold right you *might* be able to still weld a nut to it. If that doesn't work you might have to check if there's a local firm that can do spark erosion (well, that's what it's called in the UK) to essentiall 'burn' the remains of the bolt out.

In the Tool & Die industry its an EDM (Electrical Discharge Machining) that is used to remove that crap and it doesn't matter what the hardness is... it's not cheap, I would attempt milling it out with carbide after removal from engine first. One word of caution, if you destroy any tangible trace of the true location - it gets more difficult / expensive.

Good Luck

In reply to Chebbie_SB:

Thanks, I'll need the luck.

As it stands, I put the housing back in and just tightened down the one side, just enough to close it up. The broken off bolt is the least of my worries. It appears that I lost a head gasket.

Story behind this:

Wife drives van to school, thermostat shuts and stays shut, engine overheats, wife still drives it until it shuts off after a few miles of pinging/knocking. I fill it with water/antifreeze and drive home.

This is where I am at right now. Can't complain, engine has 292151 miles on it. Was just wanting to break 300K.

In reply to AquaHusky:

If you are going to do the head gasket, perhaps have the intake looked at / or get at JY replacement...

The problem with the extractor tools is they "Dig" into the bolt etc that was already tight enough to break & now its even tighter. Gets even funkier with that AL-U-mini-Um vs steel bond. I always reccomend a shot of PB Blaster & time before anything rotten gets wrenched.

In reply to racinginc215:

Mrs. Aquahusky apparently cooked the motor a bit...

If you have to remove the intake you should be able to dissolve the bolt and extractor with a saturated solution of aluminum potassium sulfate (alum) and hot water. Alum is one of the chemicals used to make pickles. You can probably get it at the grocery store. It eats ferrous metals, but not nonferrous.

If you can get at it, the only thing that might obviate the droken extractor is a carbide drill. ie a cement drill. You are going to destroy the bit, but it might break up the broken extractor.

Never tried it on hammer drill mode.

Well, as it stands, I'm going to pull the engine this spring and rebuild it to have a back-up vehicle for those times when the other cars are broke down. I'll just find another intake, maybe update to the newer version, when I tear it down.

Thankfully, my MIL is going to give us a little cash to buy another car to get us by.

I always start with left handed drill bits. Centre punch it hard, (helps break the corrosion bond) Drill with the left hand bits and usually the bit will grab the bolt and back it out. Use anti sieze when you reinstall if the bolt doesnt go into the water jacket. Doesnt help you now but it might for the next time.

Isnt there a thermostat that is designed to fail in the open position?

If you broke the head of a bolt, due to the threads being seized, there is not a bolt extractor in the world that will remove the bolt. The threads were seized hard enough to break the bolt!

Skill, heat, a drill, a welder or go back in time and smack yourself before you break the bolt off. Then heat the bolt and work it very carefully.