Date: Sun, 9 Oct 2011 14:26:12 -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: <1318171767.43748.YahooMailClassic@web110612.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>
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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
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