Ah FAWK! Header bolt broke
10-05-2013, 06:11 PM
#23
On The Tree
I just dealt with this problem. My solution? 1" hole saw through the thin sheet metal of the inner fender. That gave me a direct shot to drill out the bolt. I tried bolt and screw extractors with no luck. Be VERY careful not to drill to far as you'll hit the water jacket! I ended up drilling 5 times, each time stepping up in bit size and installing a helicoil. The kit was about $30 from Autozone and appears to have worked quite well.
I refuse to re-use the stock bolts as the driver's rear bolt on my parts car also broke off. Interestingly enough this is very common on B-bodies as well. The convenient part about LT1's though is that there's 2 bolt holes in that spot so if a bolt breaks just install headers as they don't use the same holes as stock manifolds. Too bad the LS motors don't do that.
Take my advice: buy a new set of header bolts NOW before you get ready to button things back up and find out the hard way that nobody carries anything decent. Pep Boys, Advance Auto, NAPA and Autozone do not carry these in stock. Only Autozone said they could order a set for me. This really sucks because now I have to wait until Monday to get my car to an exhaust shop so they can modify my Magnaflow cat-back to fit my Stainless works headers.
I may try Ace tomorrow to see what they've got for stainless bolts.
I refuse to re-use the stock bolts as the driver's rear bolt on my parts car also broke off. Interestingly enough this is very common on B-bodies as well. The convenient part about LT1's though is that there's 2 bolt holes in that spot so if a bolt breaks just install headers as they don't use the same holes as stock manifolds. Too bad the LS motors don't do that.
Take my advice: buy a new set of header bolts NOW before you get ready to button things back up and find out the hard way that nobody carries anything decent. Pep Boys, Advance Auto, NAPA and Autozone do not carry these in stock. Only Autozone said they could order a set for me. This really sucks because now I have to wait until Monday to get my car to an exhaust shop so they can modify my Magnaflow cat-back to fit my Stainless works headers.
I may try Ace tomorrow to see what they've got for stainless bolts.
10-05-2013, 06:13 PM
#24
On The Tree
By the way I bought a 90 degree drill attachment and it was too big to fit in the space. I then bought a flexible drill attachment and burned it out because I had it flexed too tight.
10-07-2013, 01:09 PM
#26
Staging Lane
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I just dealt with this problem. My solution? 1" hole saw through the thin sheet metal of the inner fender. That gave me a direct shot to drill out the bolt. I tried bolt and screw extractors with no luck. Be VERY careful not to drill to far as you'll hit the water jacket! I ended up drilling 5 times, each time stepping up in bit size and installing a helicoil. The kit was about $30 from Autozone and appears to have worked quite well.
I refuse to re-use the stock bolts as the driver's rear bolt on my parts car also broke off. Interestingly enough this is very common on B-bodies as well. The convenient part about LT1's though is that there's 2 bolt holes in that spot so if a bolt breaks just install headers as they don't use the same holes as stock manifolds. Too bad the LS motors don't do that.
Take my advice: buy a new set of header bolts NOW before you get ready to button things back up and find out the hard way that nobody carries anything decent. Pep Boys, Advance Auto, NAPA and Autozone do not carry these in stock. Only Autozone said they could order a set for me. This really sucks because now I have to wait until Monday to get my car to an exhaust shop so they can modify my Magnaflow cat-back to fit my Stainless works headers.
I may try Ace tomorrow to see what they've got for stainless bolts.
I refuse to re-use the stock bolts as the driver's rear bolt on my parts car also broke off. Interestingly enough this is very common on B-bodies as well. The convenient part about LT1's though is that there's 2 bolt holes in that spot so if a bolt breaks just install headers as they don't use the same holes as stock manifolds. Too bad the LS motors don't do that.
Take my advice: buy a new set of header bolts NOW before you get ready to button things back up and find out the hard way that nobody carries anything decent. Pep Boys, Advance Auto, NAPA and Autozone do not carry these in stock. Only Autozone said they could order a set for me. This really sucks because now I have to wait until Monday to get my car to an exhaust shop so they can modify my Magnaflow cat-back to fit my Stainless works headers.
I may try Ace tomorrow to see what they've got for stainless bolts.
10-07-2013, 02:33 PM
#27
On The Tree
Here you go. The rusty spot above is a hole in the inner fender that may be threaded. I used an allen wrench to stick through and I used that as an alignment guide:
