So I was torquing down my cam caps today in my freshly resurfaced and built head and came across a stripped hole for one of the middle caps. Are heli-coils the way to go in this situation? Or do I drill the hold out and move up to a larger bolt? Thanks for any advice...

A heli-coil will be fine

Look into using a Time-Sert if possible. Same principle as heli-coil but much stronger. - ++ TIME-SERT Threaded inserts for stripped threads, threaded inserts, thread repair stripped sparkplug's, Ford sparkplug blowouts, threaded inserts threaded, repair stripped threads, stripped threads, inserts threaded inserts, Ford spark plug repair,

I use Time Serts on parts like Aluminum Flywheels and high load situations.

If you drill out to the next larger size, you will need to drill out the cam cap as well. Limited material on the cap to work with.

If your budget permits, I suggest studding your cam caps. Studs are always a better solution than bolts when the parent material is soft (such as aluminum).

Same thing happened to me as well. I ended up drilling and tapping to the next size up. Even tho I had to drill the cap out a bit I felt pretty confident that it would be as strong as it was supposed to be. But I agree with studding the caps it would be much better.

Great advice, thanks!

For all the junkers I get into, I have a sleeve of helicoils ready to go for those suckers.

MB

Haha good to know I'm not the first person to run into this at least.

As far as replacing bolts goes (I'm a few short apparently) are there any negative effects to using some plain ol' stainless 6mm bolts from the hardware store? The dealer was less then helpful trying to order me a set...

These are what I'm talking about. The one on the right is the hardware store one obviously, the left is the factory cam cap bolt. Are the stock bolts special in any way?

you know what bro im having the same problem today also i just drilled out all the holes with a 1/4 bit the i got a helicoil kit from my work(autozone) installed a helicoil on all of them just to be sure.( 3 of mine started to strip )it wasnt to bad i used a lot of grease to catch the shavings took my time.. but you could use a m6 bolts from autozone they are grade 9.9 ? you might want to use a little shorter one like a 30mm

what did you torque them 2..?

HELICOIL time. 6x1 thread. ALWAYS use a torque wrench on these and torque to spec, otherwise, you can cause the journal to become out of round and or strip the threads out. In a war between steel and aluminum, steel will emerge victorious every time. Helicoil. Factory bolt. End of story. Reason to use the factory bolt is, if you notice, the nut has a flange around it. This distributes the force more evenly across the surface of the cam cap AND prevents the corners of the nut from gouging the aluminum, damaging the cap, and potentially leaving small pieces of loose aluminum in your head.

im just saying we have flanged metric bolts that are just as strong just in case you need some asap.

When this happened to my dodge stealth what i did was i filled the hole with JB weld. Then i drilled and tapped the hole to be the same size as the stock bolt. Worked like a charm.