chriskona

I'll ask my question and if you want to read my nightmare you can

Can stripped headstuds be fixed? Helicoils didnt hold up.

Nightmare.

I washed out a ring, so i take my car to a shop ive delt with for 10 years. They rehone and replace the rings. Since the heads off, i decided to get the exhaust side ported and a complete valve job since the guys who built the motor didnt do a complete job like i paid for. So anywho, i get a killer head job done by a local machine shop thats been doing race motors for 19 years. I return the head, so the shop bolts everything up, OH ****, the pistons are hitting the valves so they said. So, we send the pistons to get shaved and a custom head gasket.

Well, they tell me the machineshop took to much off the head, which they only took off .5000th wich is thinner than a peice of paper.

I simply ask, "Did you check the cam timming" "Yes its dead on" So anywho, the pistons come back and they put everything back together, **** its still hitting. Well turns out the machine shop put the exhaust springs on the intake and visversa. So its clear the shop did NOT check the cam timming, the cam would not spin, the valves were not hitting the pistons. So they swap the springs, boom everything is fine. Than they tell me they had to use a helicoil on headstud 8 because its stripped. So i get the car home after a 2400 bill, and it starts smoking. Next day i go to remove the head and noticed headstud 8 was lose. **** ME. So i took the block to the machine shop and he says the thread is just fucked.

So can these threads be fixed? it would SUCK to trash this block. Its a b18b built by GE, bore .20 over sleeved.

So after paying 2400 i got ROBBED by a shop i delt with for 10 years ;/

I wont mention the shop name, because i beleive hes a user of this site

hondaracing1on12004

you can try and re thread it and use an over sized stud. thats what i did with the head of my prelude, the exhaust studs where strippen on me, i couldnt tighten down the exhaust manifold I tried heli coils and they wouldnt hold anything. so then i drilled a bigger hole where all the stripped studs came out and rethreaded them with a bigger size then got the the over sized studs tightend the manifold and its holding till this day and that was like 4 years ago
It can be fixed.

X2BOARD

WHOA... that sux.

But the larger stud might be possible as mentioned. I would hate to see that block go to waste !

mattssi

So you already tried a helicoil and it didn't hold? crazy. I would think that you could get it fixed, but i would let a differen't machine shop do it, and make sure they do a good job, because if you have to open up the threads more, you probably won't get another shot at saving the block after this.

chriskona

From my understanding a helicoil isnt suppose to hold above 30lbs of torque ;/