I heard that the first header bolt on the head (nearest the distrobutor) often breaks, and it did so on my car. I'm not worried about it too much, but I'm wondering what is the best way about getting the piece of the bolt out of the head? There's not enough room to get a drill in there w/ a screw extractor, so what should I do?

 

i thought the one nearest to (and the one furthest away from) the distributor was actually a stud sticking out of the head.. and the rest of them were bolts that screw into the head.. ?? maybe it differs from year to year.. i have a 97 BTW

 

on my ls head, all the bolts are studs. on my friends gsr, only the top left and right are studs.

 

all of mine are studs, the nut seized to the stud on the one i mentioned, causing the stud to break. It looked sort of like a bolt when it came out. BTW this one was either very weak or already broken when I went at it yesterday, because that one nut turned very easily, while the rest of them had to be broken loose.

 

are you sure that you can't fit a drill in there to tap it out? I've seen some real tight spaces where a stud has broken off into the head and they can still be worked out with a lot of patience and skill with a drill........

 

It's about 4-5" away from the radiator fans, no way a drill is going to fit in there.

 

Gotta take the head off, drill out the stud, and then tap the hole.

 

Well then just remove the fans then, hell, remove the whole radiator....I know it requires draining the coolant buy what the hell.....that'll give you enough room to use a drill. I know there is a pneumatic drill by snap on that is vertical so it can fit in tight places...not like you want to run out and blow 400 dollars on a drill, and another 300 on a compressor.......but with the radiator out of the way you'll be able to do it....

 

yeah thats true... mine broke too. only way to really get to it is by removing the head unfortunately. dont worry too much about it.

 

bummer, had the same thing happen to me. We used a homemade right angle drill on a air rachet to drill it then get an extractor in there.. took almost 2hrs cause we had to go get a new drill bit.. damn those bolts are hard..

good luck getting it out