...almost.

Dropped it off at the shop on Tuesday and by Friday afternoon they had given up. 7 out of 10 studs snapped off deep just on the passenger side and they couldn't drill them out. Not some backyard mechanics, this guy builds his own crawling rigs.

Long story short, found some rebuilt cylinder heads on CL for a few hundred. Labor on putting those in with the new headers bolted on is $1400. Here is where I am struggling: I see rebuilt v10's around Texas for under $3000 so for a little more I could have a fresh motor under the hood. Current one has only 140k and its running smooth.

What would you do??

 

If your existing engine is running fine I would leave it and put on the new heads.

 

Will do.

Seemed like a good idea to run it across this board before dropping that much into it.

 

140,000 is not bad. Mine has 307,000 and still runs strong. I have some issues with sensors/electrical, but the engine is strong smooth and good.

There must be some way to get the broken studs out. This forum has examples of shadetree guys successfully doing it 3 or 4 different methods. Maybe your rock-crawling-fabricator is great, but just doesn't know the tricks.

Leave the engine in, spend a few hours on this forum, and take the new ideas back to your mechanic. It'll work.

 

I had the same problem I welded washers to the broken studs then welded a nut to the washer and backed the broken stud out

 

The most successful trick I've seen on this forum is about welding to the broken studs and then unscrewing them. Personally I feel like that's insane, but I haven't tried it.

Quite a few humble, shade tree, semi-skilled guys on this forum have done it successfully.

To me it seems crazy and nearly impossible to MIG weld carefully enough to avoid damaging the aluminum cylinder heads, but this is clearly a case where my opinion doesn't match real world experience. Maybe I'll try it one day. My V10 has about 6-8 broken studs.

 

I had two when I did my headers - and they were a big pain in the ***. i suspect your mechanic didn't want to keep going wasting huge amounts of shop time on a job that would climb way up there in $'s compared to just slapping on a set of heads.

For us DIY'ers who are only spending our own time, it can take two weeks and I wouldn't care. But paying someone else to do it, I can easily put myself in that mechanic's shoes and say "nope"

 

I should have mentioned, he did weld on to the studs but each time he took grips back to it the stud would snap further down until they were in the block. It's a done deal now, picking up the rebuilt heads tomorrow with clean and clear threads for the new exhaust setup.

Ill keep the the old heads and see if I can't get it done on the work bench.

 

Good luck and keep us posted.


When I installed my Banks headers I had two broken studs, successfully MIG welded a nut to one and drilled and Easy Outed the other. The MIG filler wire will not stick to the aluminum of the head, I use an aluminum top on my welding/fab table for the same reason, you can weld right up against it with no issues. You would need aluminum filler wire and I think reversed polarity on the welder with a different shielding gas to get a good weld to the aluminum.

 

Will definitely keep y'all posted. Heads are at the machine shop now getting resurfaced and valve job done.

While they are off, would it be cheap insurance to do the injectors with the plugs now or is that a waste of money if the truck is running fine?

 

If you have the heads on the bench it would be a great time to rent the kit and install TimeSerts into all ten of the spark plug holes to help prevent future blowouts.

 

^^^ What he said!

 

Never mind, got this thread mixed up with another one.

 

This doesn't apply to OP since he went a different route, but here is a trick to get the broken studs out. I broke most of mine when I installed my new used engine, so I had the luxury of doing this out of the pickup. After you weld a nut give it about 15 seconds and cool the welded stud/nut with a wet rag. The stud will shrink while the aluminum around it stays warm, 9 times out of 10 they come right out. I even had a couple that broke a couple threads down in the hole, just zap, wait, zap, wait until it builds up enough to weld something to it, cool, and remove.

 

absolutely have the time serts installed to save yourself some headaches later on.