Tonight I need ya'll's help. I am working to replace my water pump and reseal my oil cooler. I was putting the oil cooler back on and one of the bolts won't tighten. It threads, but put any torque on it and it just spins. It's a steel bolt going into the engine's front cover which is aluminum. So I went and bought a tap, ran it down in there and still have the same result.
The bolt size is M8X1.25
What would be the best course of action here? I don't want to have to replace the entire front cover.

 

You could put a helicoil in there or drill and tap for a larger bolt. Or if you were desperate, some sort of epoxy.

 

The tap only works for a larger bolt, can't tap it and then use the bolt that stripped. As was previously mentioned, either tapping for a larger bolt or putting some sort of a helicoil in are your options.

 

Is this a threaded fitting? I'm not sure which one you're talking about but if it's aluminum it is a bolt on housing and it may prove easiest to obtain a new or used housing and replace it. That's what I had to do when I stripped the fuel filter housing where the regulator goes.

 

Thanks for the replies guys. The front cover of the engine is the part that's stripped. The oil cooler housing bolts to it with the threads in question being in the cover. So replacing it requires tearing the whole front cover off and a $400 part. I've never drilled for a larger size or heli-coiled before. Never had to thankfully. I guess I'll investigate those 2 options. Home Depot had a drill bit/tap pair the I'd assume is for times like this. So I will look at whatever the next size up from M8 is. I'd assume it would be a non-metric size. We shall see how this goes!

 

Good luck, another reason to not do the oil cooler...yet! Hope you get it fixed.

-Art

 

Thanks man! So I did the helicoil. It actually wasn't that hard. I took a bunch of pictures so I will post a how-to here. I know there's a lot of people that know how to do one but I didn't know so maybe someone else would find it helpful. Let's just hope it holds!

Went to pull the new water pump out that I just got from Riff Raff...yea it's busted. So that's neat. Went to O'Reilly's and got a new Murray one. We shall see if I can actually get this truck back together!

 

Dang, so you just did the water pump? and it went bad? That's some bad luck there. I just did the Upper radiator hose, RR billet thermostat housing and a mishimoto thermostat. I always worry that there is going to be some new unknown new leak when I go out to start her up

 

So the water pump came in yesterday from Riff Raff and this is how the thermostat mounting area looked:


Needless to say, that won't work. The new pump is in and my helicoiled bolt seems to be holding. I will have more details and pictures soon. Right now my son has a little league game

 

Ventilated to atmosphere. Not a good feature in a cooling system.

 

Meh...... a little dab of silicone on it should do.

 

Waste of money. Break an egg in the coolant and the cooked egg will find it's way into the leak and fix it. It's pretty much like JB Weld only better.

 

Alright so as I mentioned, I heli-coiled the bolt. Little did I know I was making a bigger problem for my self.
Here is the bolt in question:


I had never done anything like this before so I watched a few YouTube videos on it. It seemed straight forward enough so I acquired a heli-coil set in the size I needed (M8X1.25) and the correct size drill bit (21/64) and started drilling.



This is where I went wrong. I over drilled the hole and opened the bolt cavity up to the outside world.



Well once I drilled I tapped the whole with the heli-coil tap. Use a 12-point socket to drive the tap in:


I sprayed out the hole with break cleaner several times. Then it was time to insert the heli-coil itself. It's pretty straight forward once you see someone do it or read the instructions. Sorry my picture is blurry:


Once you thread in the heli-coil, remove the insert tool and break the tab off on the inside with a punch. Then I sprayed out the hole again and we now have this:


So I thought I was good to go. But since I overdrilled, you could see daylight coming from the other end of the hole:



But hey, at least my bolt now threads in with no issues!







I filled the open areas with that Liquid Metal Epoxy but I didn't give it enough time to cure. So it leaked. I then cleaned it up, and patched it with several layers and even now have some of the JB Weld putty stuff over all that. I am letting that cure now. No idea if it will hold. I am kind done with this right now. This is my primary vehicle and I don't want to be without it. I really hope I don't have to do a new front cover.
On another note, I also stripped out the new stainless thermostat housing bolts because I am an idiot this weekend apparently. That is another story though. Wish me luck guys!

 

Just an update, I haven't driven too far but the epoxy on the spot I over drilled seems to be holding. I think we should be good there. I also replaced the thermostat bolts I screwed up and those are now good too. There's a tiny leak at the thermostat housing, I guess I'll have to redo that gasket. But for now it's so small that I can at least drive to work so I got that going for me which is nice.

 

Juan your stressing me out, it is nice to see someone doing there own work but your going to have to stop breaking crap!