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my car is dead... again


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well it made a new record i was driving it to work and i heard a loud bang turns out the dumass who owned tghge engine before me didn't know his rump roast from a hole in the ground so i have two stripped out holes in my engine and no left timing belt tensioner or idler pulley also some how one of the bolts snapped off in the hole so any ideas?

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caboobaroo i feel your pain suddenly oh well my problem is i have no experance with heli coil

 

Maybe I'll have to come over and show you. It's pretty straight forward and the one you need is a very common bolt on Subaru. The last one I bought was 40 bucks or so, and it came with 10 helicoil inserts.

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Jeff - probably an easy fix to this. helicoil is usually a last resort. can you post pictures? i've dealt with enough broken timing gear and bolts that i can probably help you out.

 

by "left" do you mean drivers side?

 

remove the sheared off bolt if it's still stuck in the hole. with some PB Blaster and some vice grips it may come out. the easiest way....this will take less than a minute and be a piece of cake - use a welder to weld a nut on the top portion of the sheared off bolt, then you can use a socket to remove the shank left in the engine.

 

if you don't have room to weld, borrow or rent a right angle drill or remove the radiator if you can get at it with a regular drill. i've used right angle drills in this exact area before. use a left handed drill bit to remove the stud. as your drilling into the bolt that's stuck in the engine, the bolt should eventually back out. if not, you'll have the bolt mostly drilled out for other options. DO NOT use an eazy-out, those things suck. if a stupid-out does works, that only means another method would have worked too.

 

once the bolts are out you do not need to helicoil those holes. those holes are deeper than the stock bolts used to hold the tensioner in place (this is true for both the passengers and drivers side). run a tap through the threads (10 x 1.25 pitch i believe), and clean the threads up. this might be all you need. but to be sure this doesn't happen again, get a longer bolt than the ones that are normally there. a longer bolt will reach the unused threads which are definitely good since the stock bolt doesn't go down that deep. find any bolt that will work and use spacers (washers) under the head of the bolt if it's too long. or, i like to cut the bolt to the exact length and then chase the end of the bolt with a die to smooth out the cut i just made.

 

if you can't get the bolt out, other than helicoil you could probably even try to drill and tap the broken bolt with a smaller diameter hole and use a smaller diameter bolt in the one that's sheared off. the one good hole that you do have is more than sufficient to hold the tensioner in place, you only need the other to keep it from rotating. (assuming this is the drivers side we're talking about).

 

let me know if you have any questions....certainly this sucks for you dude! hang in there, it's not too bad of a fix.

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- use a welder to weld a nut on the top portion of the sheared off bolt, then you can use a socket to remove the shank left in the engine.

 

Brilliant!! I've never thought of that before..:banana: I will be trying that the next time I break a bolt or a stud off in something..

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well the head is ************edso i'm replacing it the problem is the head gasket is in west hamshire or so they tell me so i took the headoff with the engine in the carand all i can say is next time i'm pulling the engine how can people do head gaskets in the car it took me2 hrs just to get the valve cover off it was easy after that getting the rest off only tooklike an hr and a half any tips for putting it back together

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Sorry to hear that Jeff.I guess the only engine that is halfwase doable is the ea81 or ea71.I know that is all I have had experience with myself besides helping someone with an ea82 when I was like 15.I don't know of anyother tips to give you.I know that the er27 is basically the ea82 just more cylinders.Looks alot harder because of the more girth it has.

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well the head is ************edso i'm replacing it the problem is the head gasket is in west hamshire or so they tell me so i took the headoff with the engine in the carand all i can say is next time i'm pulling the engine how can people do head gaskets in the car it took me2 hrs just to get the valve cover off it was easy after that getting the rest off only tooklike an hr and a half any tips for putting it back together

Its cuz you have an XT6 ;) Was it the driver's side or passengar's side you took off? The driver's side was much more difficult. Although, with the XT, there seemed to be plenty of clearance to remove everything and put everything back on. (At least the passengar side wasn't hard, Phil worked mostly on the driver's side :lol:)

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Its cuz you have an XT6 ;) Was it the driver's side or passengar's side you took off? The driver's side was much more difficult. Although, with the XT, there seemed to be plenty of clearance to remove everything and put everything back on. (At least the passengar side wasn't hard, Phil worked mostly on the driver's side :lol:)

Yeah make me do the hards side... 6's are not much worse, just DO IT!:banana:

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i've owned my chevy blazer for 4 years and have put no more than a grand into it maintance wise and it never has any problems oh it has 40,000 more miles,191,000 than my subaru and it is on it's fifth owner i guess i got really lucky with my truck and got a real lemon with the car

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