usea pipe and breakerbar a socket ment for a impact gun and wedge it against the ground and tap the starter this method worked great for me

 

or mabye just a impact gun if you wanna pull the radiator

 

Same thing I was going to say. You don't want to put too much heat on the bolt you're trying to remove. I see people at work doing it all the time. Usually they end up breaking the bolt. If I remember right, if you can find a long enough drill bit, drill completely through the center of the crank bolt, therefore it won't be completely solid and will have less material forcing the threads to contact each other..if that makes sense.

 

Sounded sketchy to me.... But it's how I finally broke mine free (after almost completely rounding off the head of the bolt!)

 

You are supposed to have the flywheel imobilized for this procedure, correct? On A4's

Put it in 4th gear on manuals, I believe.

 

Hmmm.... If your flywheel is imobilized, how is your crank going to spin???

Sounds like a good way to jump your car through the garage door!

 

From: http://www.ls1howto.com/index.php?article=2 Part 4.

On a 6 speed car, put the shifter in 4th gear and make sure the parking brake is on tight. On an A4 car, you'll need to drop the starter and either install the flywheel locking tool or wedge a screwdriver in. The starter is held in by 2 13mm bolts for 99+ models or 2 15mm bolts for 98 models and is on the bottom rear passenger side of the engine. You can leave the wires attached.

Once the engine is locked down from spinning, use your large breaker bar, a 3" extension and a 24mm socket on the crankshaft pulley bolt that goes directly into the crank through the center of the large pulley. You may need a 2-3 foot extension of pipe to slip over your wrench to break this bolt free. Once its broken free, you should be able to unscrew it by hand. Once the bolt is out, either thread it back in 4 full turns, or if you purchased a 1" longer metric crank bolt, install it all the way at this time. Now install your 3 arm pulley puller, mounting the hooks of the three arms on the inner part of the stock pulley. If you already have an underdrive pulley on there, either pull it off using a 3 screw type puller, or be VERY careful and grab onto a lip of the underdrive pulley (on the fbody ASP pulley there is a ridge half way back that can be pulled on safely with a 3 arm puller). Keeping the pulley puller arms all secure and aligned, begin to tighten the bolt on the puller and crank on it until the pulley either comes loose, or hits the head of your crank bolt. If it hits the head of your crankbolt, loosen the pulley puller, unturn the bolt 1-2 turns, and re-try it again. The key when you back your crank bolt out more, you are putting MORE stress on less and less of the threads...however, towards the end of pulley removal it will come off easier and easier so the stress isn't enough to damage the crankshaft threads.

If you get the pulley as far off as it'll come without totally removing the crankbolt and the pulley is still firmly on there, give it a good tug or a tap with a rubber mallet...it should be hanging on by just a hair at this point. If you have the longer crank bolt, this won't be an issue.

 

This is correct.... I thought you were talking about bummping the starter a few times. Turning the car over with it in gear, or flywheel locked probably isn't a good idea!

 

Lol, no it wouldn't be.

 

I've heard of alot of people doing it that way though. I'm not going to try it, because with my luck, the socket will slip off or it'll end up FUBAR'd in one way,shape, or form.

 

just ordered my powerbond and will be here wednesday/thursday.i have a 01 ss with 53k miles. should i go ahead and throw some wd or pb blaster on the crank bolt now and let it soke till im ready for the swap?? or any other tips ?? i dont wanna go thru the hassle of broken/stripped crank bolt. how many miles on the cars that you guys are havin trouble with the bolt?? thanks in advance

 

they dont do the starter bump with it in gear. think of it like this. if you lock the balancer bolt to not let it spin(breaker bar against the ground or whatever)when you bump the starter, it will spin the crank in the CCW direction(as viewed from the rear), so righty tighty/lefty loosey, the crankshaft in effect screws itself off the immobilized balancer bolt. basically the balancer bolt is acting as a stationary stud, the crankshaft is a nut on that stud, and the starter is a electric torque multiplying wrench you are using to get that nut off that stud.

as far as having broke an ARP bolt in the crankasft, i'd say go ahead and pull the pulley off, use a left hand drill bit meant for steel, drill it for an extractor, insert the extractor, heat the crank snout with a torch, then unscrew the extractor with the rest of the broken bolt on it. if you use the torch method to heat the snout, remember to keep the heat moving so the snout heats up evenly and remove anything else from the front of the motor that may be damaged by that much heat. a heat gun used in a trim shop can be used in place of a flame torch, same rules apply though because those guns get HOT! if these methods dont work, it'll be time to give a machine shop a call.

Ski23, if you have a half inch impact with a 24mm swivel, use that to get it off. and use a NEW stock six point grade 10.9 bolt for the final torque(a stock GM bolt or one you get from somewhere else) once you have used the OLD bolt to achieve proper pulley alignment.

 

have a 1/2 impact and swivel. thanks for the advice

 

I went over to 00TurboTA's shop the other day to help with the broken bolt. We ended up taking the ARP bolt and milled it flat, found dead center, drilled it, and used it to center the drill bit on the broken bolt inside the crank snout. We kept going bigger with drill size on the "alignment" tool and likewise on the broken bolt. I had to leave for the night, but we plan to keep doing this until we can get big enough to relieve tension on the threads by it having no backbone. We can hopefully finish the job soon.

We started using a factory bolt to make the homemade alignment tool, but it's hardened pretty good. It kept burning up drill bits. The broken ARP bolt was so much easier to drill through...

It seems the factory bolt is harder than the ARP bolt.

 

I just finished repairing my crank after I had a bolt snap off inside of it. Mine actually snapped trying to put the new pulley on with the longer bolt method. Somewhere it must've cross threaded and the longer bolt broke on the way out. Here's how I fixed it:

I first drilled with a small drill bit (don't know the exact size but it's at most only 3/4 the size of the bolt. After drilling through I stepped up to a bigger drill bit (size 35/64). For both of these I used a collar (made by my friend and his dad) that slipped into the crank and over each drill bit in order to ensure they drilled straight. Now there was just a little bit of the bolt left in the threads. I ran an M16 tap through there to clean out the last of the bolt and see if the threads were salvagable. They weren't, we got all the old bolt out but the threads were real sloppy. I had a helicoil kit for an M16 helicoil. It has a drill bit, tap, installer, and helicoil. I didn't end up using the drill bit since it only would've removed what was left of the old threads, instead I just started the tap and the end of the snout and tapped all the way down. Once that was done I installed the helicoil with the installer, put the balancer on, and put the bolt in. I haven't fired the car yet (that comes tomorrow) but it seems to be holding well, we torqued the bolt to 240 ft-lbs. If you decide to go this route I can give you some more details. The situation you're in sucks big time, I know it delayed the finishing of my car for close to a month (coming up with a plan, accumulating parts, and actually fixing it). Don't get too bummed, it can be fixed and without getting a new crank.

No matter what you do contact 618Hawk because he makes an installer for putting the pulley back on and it works great. Don't use the old bolt or longer bolt methods, use his puller and keep the stress off the crank threads.

Here's an article on helicoils if you've never used them.
http://www.roadstarmagazine.com/modu...rticle&sid=233

 

Like My90iroc already said, find someone to make you ao collar. You need a lathe, and a 2 inch long piece of steel rod atleast an inch or so in diameter. Turn it down to .700 on the lathe except for about 1/4 inch on the end to theres a shoulder to keep the collar from slipping down inside the crank. Then drill out the center of the collar with the drill youre gonna use to drill out the bolt. A 3/8 drill would be a good start. The collar will make sure that first drill bit started nice and true. After that you probably dont need the collar any more, but it wouldnt hurt to keep opening it up with progressively larger bits. Dont step up drill sizes in too amll inciments otherwise the flutes will just grab rather than actually drilling down.

 

i've got 121K miles on my car, the bolts givin me hell and i've tried using a 6pt socket with a 2 ft 1/2'' breaker bar and 3-4 feet of cheater bar,...and NOTHING, so what would be the best/better route?

 

I would advise against bucking your puller rod up against the crank bolt to remove the pulley. Much better to use a LARGE allen head cap screw with a couple of big flats washer under the head of it. The OD of the allen screw needs to be just slightly smaller than the ID of the crank bolt threads so the allen screw can't move around. It's not threaded in there just slid into the hole. Once the allen screw is inserted into the hole the crank bolt came out of you put your puller on and the puller rod fits into the hex shaped hole in the allen screw. This makes the rod self-centering and no stress is put on the crank threads. The puller rods bucks up against the allen screw, the allen screw bucks up against the flat washers and the flat washers buck up against the crank snout. The crank threads don't even get involved in the process. If you can get your hands on one use a Posi-Lock 3 leg puller. They make this a one man job because the legs of the puller aren't flopping all over the place as you try to get it into position to remove the pulley.

 

well thanks but at the moment its not the pulley thats giving me problems, but instead its the bolt...for now

 

This is true to an extent. Heating the bolt will break down the loctite and make it easier to remove. This doesn't mean to heat it till it's glowing red though.