can someone please help me... I replaced the water pump and went to time everything and put it back together and relized the tension pulley bolt was stripped. can anyone please tell me how to fix this!!! i have a tap and die set but dont have enough room between the fender and motor to do the job. and with a wife and three kids I NEED this done ASAP!! thank you so much

 

this might help, but if you dont want to use jb weld, you might need to get it retapped, which means you would have to take out the motor to do so. But this link shows a quick fix, and i have used this method before, but not on the motor block.

http://www.diylife.com/2008/04/23/st...thread-repair/

 

While replacing my timing belt and water pump, I broke off one of the water pump bolts in the block (don't ask). I was similarly confronted with the problem of limited access to this tight area. The solution for me was to remove the left motor mount and bracket and also the front lower motor mount attached to the A/C bracket. The latter also involved unbolting the A/C compressor to move it out of harms way, though no A/C lines were undone. With this done, I put a jack protected by a piece of wood on the oil pan and slowly raised the left side of the engine until I had enough space to drill out the bolt and retap the bolt hole.

 

ive done that but still dont have enough room to get to the tension pulley with out having to pull the cv's it wont lift any higher its hitting the crank pulley. grr

 

Yeah, my work was done with the crank pulley off. I know this isn't apealing to you, but pull the crank pulley and timing belt covers off again to create the space you need.

 

how far you think itll go without stressing the cv's too much?? my biggest issue is the car is lowered so much, i couldnt get the jack under the front part of the frame with the bumper off. i hate ebay coilovers lol

 

Yeah, you need a way to get the front end on stands. Then the axles probably won't be an issue.

 

hey Ron. not to thread jack, but i seriously JUST snapped a water pump bolt on my motor today. thankfully. right now its out of the car. did you just use a stud extractor? or did you drill it out and re-tap it? i actually have 2 studs broke off in the block for the water pump. one was there when i get the block, the other i did today with 9 foot lbs on the torque wrench. kinda wierd that it broke with so little pressure. the wrench didnt even click. and i was barely even putting pressure on it. PM me with what you did if you could so as not to dirty up his thread any more thanks man.

 

my fault. it says right on your first reply what you did lol.

 

If you take the timing covers off its easy to do. I did this on my motor the first time we put it in the car. I went to Ace and bought a tap and die and I put it in the hole and used a Crescent Wrench to turn the tap until I retapped the hole. It took like 45 mins but it was good after that, then i just rethreaded the bolt since i damaged the thread in stripping the hole.

 

sounds easy enough. but the bolt is broke flush with the hole. so you dont need to drill it out first? or what? the timing covers are off. so you just used the tap first? no drilling it out?

 

I just put the tap in the hole with my hand and then turned it with a crescent wrench until i hit the back of the hole. then i unscrewed it and put the bolt and tightened it.

Edit: oh wait you broke the bolt off in the hole? If you did that then you need to drill it. YOU dont necessarily have to jack up the motor. There is a fluid you can buy to help with taking out bolts like that, and there is a special little remover that you can buy and turn with a wrench, you drill that into the hole manually and then pull out the bolt. I'm pretty sure they sell those at home depot. I used to have one around here but I think i broke it when I was trying to get this bolt out of my Condenser.