Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2011 04:56:01 -0700
Reply-To: Stephen Grisanti <bike2vcu@YAHOO.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Stephen Grisanti <bike2vcu@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Re: Exhaust fun never ends - some progress
In-Reply-To: <BAY152-ds2C9288CEF0773749B83ACA0E20@phx.gbl>
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Good advice that I hope I won't need. We shall see. Thanks!
Stephen
--- On Mon, 10/10/11, Dennis Haynes <d23haynes57@hotmail.com> wrote:
From: Dennis Haynes <d23haynes57@hotmail.com>
Subject: RE: Exhaust fun never ends - some progress
To: "'Stephen Grisanti'" <bike2vcu@YAHOO.COM>, vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Date: Monday, October 10, 2011, 11:32 PM
These steel nuts in the aluminum heads have a way of becoming one! If there
is enough stud to get a nut threaded then a MIG welder with some skill may
be able to weld the nut onto the stud. The super heating of the stud will
expand it maybe put enough pressure to free the threads when it cools and
the welded nut can be used to wrench it out. The weld won’t be strong so
don't try too hard. With welded nut in place an oxy-acetylene torch can heat
the head enough (real hot real fast so heat don’t get to gasket) to get it
loose. After that cut flush and drill it out. Forget EZ out. It will only be
a hardened broken piece to deal with. Drill it out and re-thread with a
quality tap set. Starting, plug, and bottom tap. If you get a mess it will
be Heli-coils to the rescue.
Dennis
-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of
Stephen Grisanti
Sent: Sunday, October 09, 2011 5:26 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: Exhaust fun never ends - some progress
Okay, one down, one to go.
I tried double-nutting by grinding two
standard nuts to about 5mm thickness so I could fit two on the stud and all
they did was unscrew off the studs. Could not get the nuts double-nutted
tightly enough to break the studs loose without stripping something. Mind
you, I've been alternately heating/icing and applying PB Blaster so the
studs are getting a workout.
Splined-type extractor did not work. Screwed it onto the most accessible
stud and put the wrench on it and it then bottomed out against the head, and
more turning pressure merely carved off some of the remaining threads and
the tool slipped off. Did the same thing on the second stud.
Then bought a cam-type extractor and that walked itself off the end of the
first stud, not having sufficient length to grab onto. This tool is designed
for a stud stub about 1" long or more. I think it would be fine for that but
is not helping me on these short ones and it would not fit on the second
stub and give me room to use a ratchet on it.
What did work for the accessible one (#1 cylinder) was a small pipe wrench
with a cheater bar on it. I was looking for my larger Vise Grips and found
my large and small pipe wrenches. Large was too clumsy and required too much
swing and the little one with finer teeth worked to turn one of the studs
out using that 1/16th-of-a-turn-at-a-time tedious progress that I dared not
object to, but access on #4 is just too limited for it to be able to get a
bite and then still have room to swing. I may have to drain the coolant and
remove the big metal pipe running from the water pump to the thermostat
housing. That's a lot of hassle just to increase the amount of room to swing
a wrench but it's that or call a welder for the washer/nut trick. I'm
philosophically considering this as an opportunity to change the coolant but
I'd really rather not take more stuff apart.
At least it's a nice day out and it's not like I'm wasting a cold, nasty or
miserably hot day and I found one more thing. The converter thieves that I
thought made the single cut through the J-pipe and then blew off any further
work to steal my cat? I had to remove the cat/muffler/tailpipe assembly in
order to cut off the old J-pipe flange and found that someone had tried
cutting one of the cat bolts also. The thieves were more industrious than I
thought.
Stephen
--- On Sun, 10/9/11, Stephen Grisanti <bike2vcu@YAHOO.COM> wrote:
From: Stephen Grisanti <bike2vcu@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Re: Exhaust fun never ends
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Date: Sunday, October 9, 2011, 10:49 AM
John,
Thanks for the tip. I know about EZ Outs and have used them once or twice
but am leery in this application. Numerous posts on the Samba warn against
them due to breakage, making further extraction even more difficult. In
addition, there is drill access for the forward stud but not for the
rearward one. I'll post what eventually works.
Stephen