Bolts Instead of Studs For Exhaust

[mickaz]

well i am a machinist and when i do it I do it with a drill. you could use a press drill but still its useless to send them there unless you want to pay for nothing really. Ok if you are Very bad with a drill or a pressdrill well send it but then again you sould not be working on a car.

[96lumina]

Take it easy...I was just trying to help a feller out and it turned into a big feasko...my intention was to merely state that what you had stated sounded like you did your repair in the car...small repairs are ok to do...I was only stating that even if a DIY had to heli-coil all the exhaust bolts then that should be performed by a machine shop...I say this cuz drilling aluminum without the head fixed could result in new hole that wont line up right...and getting your manifolds back on ca=could be a real challenge...I wish anyone luck that wants to attempt this heil-coil job in their garage...one or 2 repairs is fine, but to do 12 holes and make 'em straight will be almost impossible without the use of machine equipment.

[mickaz]

wrath that is exactly whats i meant. Thanks! i was talking about easiness guys, the engine was just the last time I did it on one.

[pocket-rocket]

I never said do the helicoil with the head on his car ( or show me where i wrote that.)

Corrected. I understand Mick's point though. Quad 4 in car helicoil, possible (lots-o-room). Any 60v6 in car helicoil, I don't see it happening, even with a 90* drill (lots-o-lack-o-room). It could be possible, but I wouldn't recommend it.

[WrathOfSocrus]

I have to agree, that right there makes you think you did it in the car.

I never said do the helicoil with the head on his car

He made a typo there. The point of his story wasn't to focus on the fact that he did it in the car. It was to illustrate the fact that you can repair damaged threads in a head with a helicoil without sending it off to a machine shop if you are careful and patient. I don't know why people have been so letter of the law lately. Like that thread that went 3 pages because someone mistakenly refered to his flexplate as a flywheel, even tho it was stated multiple times he had an automatic, people got so hung up on the fact he called it a flywheel. I don't jump down everyone's throat when I see people refer to an oil galley as a 'gallery' and people with much higher post counts make that mistake quite often.

Cut a man a break!

[bszopi]

I never said do the helicoil with the head on is car ( or show me where i wrote that.)

I did this on my quad 4 head that was allready installed.

I have to agree, that right there makes you think you did it in the car.

[mickaz]

So how you gonna do the rear head?, and to do the front you will have to remove the radiator...A quad is a whole different ball game...do one first on a V6 car, then recommend a V6 owner to do theirs...there's not a lot of room for a drill let alone one with a 5" drill bit attached...come on! use your head...no pun intended, LOL...I'm fairly familiar with the quad 4 and can say your motor sits straight up and you have a ton of room for a drill and bit to do what you need done...and willing to bet you fixed some one else's header bolt install cuz you had a bunch of stripped holes when you bought your car, just a guess.

I never said do the helicoil with the head on is car ( or show me where i wrote that.) what i meant is that the is no need to send is head to a machine shop to pay for something he can do EASILY.

and when I did the helicoil i wasnt the exhaust bolts it was the head to cam hole Ihad to helicoil, because my friend torqued it down too much. After I tried to break one to see if it was possible and It wouldn't even buldge. since the studs are hand tight, i cant see them breaking a helicoil, even bolts would not break a helicoil.

[pocket-rocket]

I don't think it would hold up to the heat in that application anyways, lol.

[Rootie524]

yeah same haha.. threadlocker wouldn't really make sense in this application.

[pocket-rocket]

dont know if this has already been covered since i briefly skimmed through this but zzperformance.com sells exhaust studs for about $1.00 a piece with antiseize or threadlocker (i foget which one) already on it. much better deal than the stealership.

Nice find. I would hope it's antiseize.

[Rootie524]

dont know if this has already been covered since i briefly skimmed through this but zzperformance.com sells exhaust studs for about $1.00 a piece with antiseize or threadlocker (i foget which one) already on it. much better deal than the stealership.

[96lumina]

I did this on my quad 4 head that was allready installed. You just have to have a Drill and a drill bit to the right size of the helicoil and you install it with the tool and voila. the helicoil is going to be 10x stronger then the old threads you had anyways.

if the studs dosent break the aluminum thread, they wont certainly break a helicoil.

So how you gonna do the rear head?, and to do the front you will have to remove the radiator...A quad is a whole different ball game...do one first on a V6 car, then recommend a V6 owner to do theirs...there's not a lot of room for a drill let alone one with a 5" drill bit attached...come on! use your head...no pun intended, LOL...I'm fairly familiar with the quad 4 and can say your motor sits straight up and you have a ton of room for a drill and bit to do what you need done...and willing to bet you fixed some one else's header bolt install cuz you had a bunch of stripped holes when you bought your car, just a guess.

[mickaz]

I did this on my quad 4 head that was allready installed. You just have to have a Drill and a drill bit to the right size of the helicoil and you install it with the tool and voila. the helicoil is going to be 10x stronger then the old threads you had anyways.

if the studs dosent break the aluminum thread, they wont certainly break a helicoil.

[96lumina]

Would heli-coiling be recommended? I don't see why not as almost everything on aircraft engines are.

You could heli-coil all your holes yes...but first you will have to remove your heads so you can have a machine shop enlarge all the holes and retap them so after the heli-coil is installed they will be the same size stud you have now...if you just heli-coil the hole you have you will end up with a much smaller stud that will not be suffecient enough to handle the heat/cooling cycles...I also believe that the "aircraft" heli-coil is a much different application then the repair jobs you buy down at the store...all aviation work is highly monitored and recorded by engeneered specialists...the process they use and the type of material to install their heil-coil is way different then what you buy down at your local auto parts store...all I can say is it's your car, so you can do what ever you want to it.

[WrathOfSocrus]

The rocker arm bolts are installed with more torque than the exhaust manifolds and they compress a valve spring up to a few thousand times per minute for hundreds of thousands of miles. The dogbone mounts are bolted down with a lot more torque and keep the engine from flopping around. I'm pretty sure they used studs because you can slide the gasket and manifold on and hold it in place with one finger while installing the nuts to tighten them down, instead of fumbling with the gasket as you install bolts. Useful for the assembly line and home mechanic alike.

That being said, I ordered long stainless steel set screws along with stainless hardware in hopes of preventing corrosion. I got them from boltdepot.com. The shipping was about as expensive as the parts. If you have other bolts you are looking to replace that you can't find locally, it is worth the time to figure out what you need and make one order as opposed to overpaying on shipping twice.