Stripped Head Bolt

[drewbird91]

Alright,
Long story short, the last two head bolts I was trying to get off (center two) became stripped. I have the ARP's waiting to be put on with a new hg. How the heck am I suppose to get those two cracked loose or out?? Tryed impact gun, air gun, bar and rod. All with no luck. I was thinking trying an 11mm or the next closest standard equivalent. The bolt head is rounded off a bit but I'm hoping the bigger one might grab it. And of course I don't have that size and Sears is closed for the night. What else can I do?? Aren't they harded bolts, going to make it a pain to drill out? I hopefully will get the bigger allen size tomorrow. Please chime in.

 

[twitch1447]

vice grips work great.........If area is clean enough(no flamable fluids) you can take a propane torch to the housing for the bolt till it gets a little red and the bolt should come right out(turn easy that is). Is how i used to get the stubborn bolts off my axles on the jeep.

 

[FORMONTOYA]

tough one, vise grips will be hard to fit in the area of the head bolt caps, and i WOULD NOT recommend putting a torch on the bolts. as for how to get them out...good luck

jim

 

[twitch1447]

torch to the housing of the bolts.

Don't recommend putting it on the bolts either.

Could always drill/tap it out but i would save that for last resort.

 

[drewbird91]

Thanks for all the replies guys. We tried the bigger size allen socket/sharper edges and hammered it down a bit into the bolt and that got the one out but no luck with the other one, it was completly rounded. So we plugged off a bunch of passages and started to drill, just to see if it would even bite. Well it did so we would drill for a bit, then I took a magnet in there and got as much of the shavings out as possible. Then went back to drilling, finally switched to a bigger drill bit and once that got through the head of the bolt (we had it marked off and were very very careful not to go too far) the head of the bolt broke. Everything else was disconnected and the head slide right off over the broken bolt. Took a pipe wrench to the remainder of the bolt and cam right out.

Now I have to disassemble the head and clean her up real good, but that was the plans anyway.

 

[Catbox_95]

I know you got it out already, glad to hear it. I just wanted to stress for future references of people reading this thread that you DO NOT want to put a torch to ANY are of the head or bolts. The extreme uneven heating of a localized area will warp the head and/or block deck.

 

[drewbird91]

Plus there was a bunch of oil sitting in the head still. So I thought oil and fire not the way to go. Drill was the "last resort" so to speak.