Well, now I've done it- broken tail housing bolt

 

Pulling the tail housing on my 4EAT, the lower right bolt broke off.

 

It's not in a good spot for just leaving it out, and I've never ever had luck drilling a broken bolt in aluminum.

 

I hope these bolts are really soft...

Weld a nut on top.

Thats exactly what I was thinking to when I seen the post, works great. After you weld the nut on heat the oustide a little so the metal can expand and it will be easier to unscrew the bolt out.

There is a little bit of bolt sticking out of the trans housing (I got the tailshaft off), and I have a MIG welder, but since the threads are ripped out I'm not sure even the heating/cooling of the welding will break it free.

 

It broke loose, started threading out, bound, would move a little in and out and then bound solid.

 

I will probably try drilling first.

Or maybe vice grips and heat, what the heck. Haven't used ther blue wrench in awhile.

Careful on the heat, but yeah add a more heat then keep trying to work it in and out it should work out the crap in the threads and if not you can always use quick steal epoxy and retap it.

BTW good luck on your project, sounds like you went to fix something simple and has turned into a pain in the arse.

Got through it with a pilot drill,.

 

Lotsa pressure, very low rpm.

 

Now I know what I did wrong- I carried some parts into the garage today and placed them on the only flat surface- the drill case.

 

I LITERALLY said to myself "I'll put these here since I WON'T BE NEEDING ANY DRILLS TODAY".

 

Moron.

Drilled it to tap it the orig size, some of the bolt then fell out.

Ran a tap through it.

Fit is a little loose, I think I may try the liquid thread repair.

i don't think those bolts are much in the way of ft-lbs, sounds like you're headed in the right direction.

 

if you're retaining stock thread pitch & size then measure to see if you can use a longer bolt than the original too.  i've done that countless times on other Subaru parts and there's almost always more unused threads in the hole - the hole/threads are deeper than the original bolt.  this will give you more meat to grab onto.

I tested the threads and they won't hold, I don't want to rely on the last few so I picked up a heli-coil kit.

No drill bit, and it's 30 bucks! ouch!

 

About to start drilling...

Helicoil in, now back to the original job.

Well, I'm boned for the next couple days. dealer gave me the wrong gasket, and it took them 2 days top get that one.

Resisting the temptation to reuse it...

Parts goob gave me the trans pump housing gasket.

Housing in place and 'torqued' (don't have one that goes much below 25, I set it for 20 and checked against it, and the dang thing is too big to really fit under the car). Time to start sipping a brew as I continue.

Went to pick up the headpipe(s) with the 3 cats to put it back on- one pipe moved relative to the other.

One of the nuts holding the bolt-on front cat disintegrated.

 

Found some exhaust nuts at the parts store, got it replaced and tapped the other corroded and half-missing nut off, and replaced that one too.

 

Some metal simply flaked off the flanges when I tightened the nuts, oh man, I hope that holds.

All back together.

Nothing seems to be leaking (yet).

AWD appears to be working perfectly (whole point of the job was to swap out the 2004 AWD solenoid, valve, and plate for my 2003 pieces).

Hope it all goes well for ya. Sounds like you had WAYYYY to much fun with this lil project.