howdididothat

Well I was pretty dumb this weekend and broke off 3 valve cover bolts in the head of my 98 civic. I was tired and didn't really feel like working on the hooptie daily. I grabbed the wrench and just started twisting, somehow I never noticed I was tightening all the valve cover bolts. I twisted till they were free and moved on to the next one. I guess I just figured the old car had some stiff bolts . Anyways long story short I broke off 3 of the bolts and 2 somewhat survived to fight another day.

I tried drilling a hole and using a EZ out extractor with no luck and have no clue what to do at this point I am super screwed. So I figured I would publish my amazing moment of stupidity online and see what you all have to say.
1) Is this salvageable at this point?
2) Is it worth the money to salvage it from an older 98 civic with 140k miles?
3) Where would I even take it to get fixed?
4) How much would something like this cost?

Thanks for the help, and always remember "Righty Tighty, Lefty Loosey"

Nave43

Easiest thing to do would be put a new head on it. Due for a timing belt or water pump or head gasket? Now is the time to do them all and your motor shall be bulletproof.

You could also completely drill out the old bolts. Put in one of the many thread inserts on the market, still need new valve cover bolts but do-able

Or... leave them and just ratchet strap on the valve cover? ... or not <.<

any auto shop should help you, the cost depends entirely on where you go

howdididothat

Thanks for the reply. Guess I will go buy some ratchet straps.

Haha but I'll do some research on getting a new head and replacing it. Might as well try it out myself at this point since I already jacked the engine.

tony_2018

You can try to remove them and retap them.

holmesnmanny

If you can use a die grinder to cut a notch in the head of the bolt, then you can use an impact driver to punch them out. The key to using an impact driver is to tap the bit into the notch before placing the impact wrench on the bit. Make sure you got the impact driver on the correct setting so it punches it out counter clockwise instead of turning it in. Test out the impact driver without a bit on a piece of wood so you can make sure you got it right. As you hammer the end it will drive the bit counterclockwise.

https://www.harborfreight.com/impact...ase-37530.html

A lot of times the bits that they come with really suck so buy just another set of bits, I got a decent set from Oreilly auto. It's a 4 pack of impact driver bits.

crazyhorse2011

This guys on the money. My car actually had the same problem, but worse. The last guy impacted down the valve cover bolts so hard it literally broke a shard of metal off the head where one of the bolts threaded in.

Yeah.

So I drove around for eternity with only 3 of 5 bolts in, and it was tight but it still leaked a tiny bit of oil. One of the mechanics at my dealership was able to carefully tap out the remaining bolt threads in each hole with a screwdriver and a hammer, basically tapping the screwdriver at a 60 or 70 degree angle to the screw (the bolt broke off dirty, leaving behind a surface for a screwdriver to tap if you were careful about it). this took about 10 minutes to rotate it one full turn but after it poked out a little bit he grabbed a pair of needle nose and finished the job. We then replaced the bolts with random hardware store bolts, got a new gasket kit, and voila, no oil leaks