Long story short, car overheated and head gasket partially blew, got coolant combusting...

Got everything off cept the head bolts but I feel like they're gonna break. No question that this is the first time head bolts have been off. Is it normal for the head bolts to not want to come off? I'm afraid I'm gonna break one, but is it gonna be safe just turning the fckers til they break loose? When I took the rocker arm assembly off it was sorta the same way but these head bolts are a bit harder to break loose.

 

on those accords they go torqued down about 72 ft lbs so they are very hard to take off and will make a cracking sound when they first come loose for about a half turn or so.

 

lol I got one two three and four cracked......so far so good, so then I just broke my socket on number five, time for a trip down to kragen.

 

x2

They are locked on there good and tight. It takes a bit of force to break them free. That crack sound when they finally break loose sounds a lot like the bolt snaps clean in half.

 

i love that sound. x10

 

i went down and got a twelve point socket and partly rounded off one bolt. Should I take it back and get a six point?

I just now came up with the idea of trying to get as much oil off the bolts as possible.

I am gonna use a rubber mallet to tap on an extension with the socket on it to try to loosen it up before I give it another try.

 

Use a 6 point socket on a 6 point bolt and use a 12 point socket on a 12 point bolt. it will save you from rounding the heads off them.

 

I think I'm fcked. I think using the 12 point rounded it off too much. The 6 point is grabbing but it's still stripping I've tried every angle and it aint working. What the fck am I gonna do now? Anyone have any ideas. I just sprayed some pb in there to try to loosen it up. Don't know if that's gonna work. I'm looking at some of the bolts and some are clearly inside the head. I don't think that's supposed to be like that I bet someone overtorqued them and now it's rusted into the head.

 

Will a gator grip work?

 

You could try a bolt extractor.

Irwin calls them Bolt-Grips: http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/...key=THDSiteMap

Sears has them and calls them Bolt-outs or something like that.

I doubt the gator-grip will work for a bolt that is that tight.

 

Cool, that is exactly what I just bought at Kragen. I'm gonna give it a try now, wish me luck. I'm gonna try to remove as much oil as possible from the head.

 

Nope, didn't work. I'm gonna call around and see if I can find someone mobile to come out and loosen up the bolts.

 

sounds like a serious hassle

 

I just took off the rocker arm assembly and I can clearly see that all five bolt heads are stripped. I didn't get any of them off I just rounded them. Secondly, you can see by the design of the god damn bolt that it is designed to strip. Unlike most bolts, the bottom of the bolt head is round, and I don't mean slightly round from top to bottom but there's about a quarter inch of roundness, I don't think I've seen this is any other bolt. My point is that when you go to take it off the bottom doesn't sit flat so it's almost guaranteed to move and when it does every so slightly move it will strip. I think the only way you should be taking these bolts off is to use an impact wrench, but using one will guarantee that it will go more than a third of a turn i think which is what the book says you should be doing on each bolt.

 

You mess up using a 12 point on a head bolt. I hope you didn't buy a cheap set of bolt extractor. Get a good set (you get what you pay for), they are not created equally. A good set will bite into your bolt and retain its shape, while a cheap set will grab to a certain extent, but will give and strip your bolts even more. Here are two other options that I have used in the past: 1)remove your rocker assy. and cam, and drill them out. 2)remove your rocker assy. and cam, and weld another bolt right on top of the strip bolt.

 

No No No! First off you should of used the right tools for the job. Even a noob knows not to use a low quality 12 point on head bolts!

 

I was using the six point on the first five, and now thinking back it appears it was the first six bolts. As I said before, they were already stripping and this was with it perfectly straight, I was doing it by the book.

The socket broke on the 7th bolt and that's when I bought the 12 point. That 12 point never came into play until the 6 point broke on the 7th bolt. This wasn't really even a matter of having the wrong tools. I was using the right tools but the bolt head almost guarantees a strip imo. I was looking at some other bolts I took off and they all had flat tops under the head of the bolts. Not one had a round top under the bolt head. As I said this is absolutely ridiculous from an engineering standpoint, considering the stress on these bolts for their location in the engine and the amount of torque applied from the factory.

This really makes me never want to buy a honda ever again, that's how mad I am.

 

I can do everything related to the head gasket replacement myself, I just need the bolts off so I'm just gonna have to call around and see how much to have someone take off the bolts and I guess just have my car towed there..

 

What size 6 point socket were you using at first?

 

14mm

 

That's weird that it would round off the bolt heads, was the socket cracked, worn or stretching maybe????

 

Not at all, I don't think I ever even used the 14mm on anything on my car, nothing even comes to mind. I was actually kinda surprised since most stuff calls for 10's and 12's or I think a 13 rarely.

 

Looking at pictures of head bolts, I don't know what the hell I was thinking about trying to PB the bolt. The threads appears to be very low and the bolt is obviously very tall the PB doesn't really have a chance to penetrate the threads imo.

 

check this out.. if u havent got the bolt off yet. go to sears. they sell twelve square point sockets. those sockets supposed to remove anything. and yes its a 14mm

 

shoulda been usinng a high quality box end wrench so more of the force is concentrated on the bolt head sides instead of going crooked