Well, Good news first: Christine finally moved under her own power tonight! I got the motor together for the most part yesterday and put it in the car tonight. By myself it took me about 5-6 hours which really isn't all that bad. Next steps to drivability is bleeding the clutch and the brakes, then filling the coolant system...

Which brings me to the bad news: remember that issue I was having with my crank threads? Yeah, they're gone now. Crank pulley's halfway on and I can't pull it on any further. Anybody have any ideas?

The three options I was thinking are (1) special order helicoil and new bolt, (2) tap larger and order larger bolt and (3) make a belt work around the water pump with where the pulley's at now and drop it off at my buddy's shop cause I don't have the time to **** with it.

Suggestions?

 

I don't think you will have much success trying to change the offset of your pump and accessories to make up for the stuck pulley. Either one of the alternatives you listed regarding a helicoil or larger bolt will require tapping the crank for new threads. I don't see how you can avoid it. Hopefully there will be no need to pull the motor. Good luck with it.

 

I was just going to put enough of a belt on there to spin the water pump while I drove it the 15 minutes to a shop my friend owns and let him take care of it... I'm going to give him a call now and see what he thinks.

Any other ideas?

 

helicoil is your best bet. not that big a deal, but the kits are pricey. You need an M16-2 if I recall.

 

how did you screw the threads up?

 

The other option is to heat the pulley cautiously to be able to press it fully onto the crank snout.

I still don't understand why guys don't go that route when installing a pully. Heat it in an oven to roughly 200-250 degrees, and it will slide on pretty easily without much fuss. You can literally tap it on with a dead blow hammer with just a few soft taps.

Sorry to hear about the stripped threads, I'm sure a good performance shop with be able to tap/helicoil the threads while it still in the car.

 

pull it back off and do the oven heating method. its not goin to hurt the dampner, it gets to that temp anyways in a stock app. car while driving. or maybe close to it. Ive done that several times on SBC's. but it'll still have to be helicoiled. but atleast that wil get it to the shop safely w/o throwing the belt.

did you try to pull the pulley on with a bolt, instead of a stud/washer/nut?

 

I used my ARP bolt...

 

does the long threaded rod and thick washer/nut method hurt the threads?? I dont see how it would make a difference...

Thanks

 

no, it doesn't

 

it makes a big difference because the threaded rod (stud) is contacting ALL the threads at once. so the force of the banancer being pressed onto the crank is spread out across all the threads evenly instead of just the few the bolt is touching/digging into.

 

This is correct. Its surprisingly easy to seize, crossthread, bottom out, or otherwise ruin the crank threads using the longer bolt method. I had sucessfully used a longer bolt a half dozen times, and then on that 7th time, the bolt seized up. It brok on the way out. It wasnt bottomed out or cross threaded. Its just seized for seeingly no reason. We had to drill, tap and helicoil it. From now on, ill only use the threaded rod tool. Its easily worth the 30 bucks or so.

 

The reason I ask is because I myself use a long threaded rod to get the pulley started enough so a stock GM bolt can then be threaded....once I got that threaded I torqued as much as I could with my torque wrench would go...backed that out, put the new GM bolt in, torqqued it to 37, and proceeded to 140 degrees like the HOW TO says but it seemed to just STOP....it worries me to be honest, I havent turned the engine yet sooo
It looks fully seated, but I dont know!
any advice?

 

Who's the guy that sells the threaded rod stuff on here?

I need to order one ASAP. I'm going to run a tap through and try to clean what threads are left as good as I can, use the rod to pull the pulley on and then throw a new GM bolt in there.

I'll just mark it and keep an eye on it after that.

If that doesn't work, I'll have to drill, tap, and helicoil it. Just so I have the part numbers, which helicoil did you use, Guitsboy?

 

618Hawk sells the tool. Great guy, and the tool works amazing. i just used mine a couple days ago finishing up my cam install. best $39 ive ever spent.

 

yeah, with overnight fees mine'll be a bit pricier than that, hahaha

 

I ordered mine, and he had it to me within 2 days.

 

Yeah, holiday shipping's a bitch, haha

I talked to him and we're doing something with after the holidays for the next time but it looks like I've got a plan to get the car back on the road on Wed