is it fixable? short story: had a water leak while back...tried to tighten it...well i ended up breaking the bolt off...easy out works right? NO broke the ez out off in the bolt thats broken off in the block...tried to drill it out, but dumbass me screwed up...is there any way of saving this master piece? honestly the bottom end isnt worth a ton of time and work id rather just find another 351w block but if any one has good ideas shoot them my way, i dont want a 302 right now, to much money in intake and heads and dizzy (i know heads swap but intakes dont and they are matched)
heli-coil You might get a heli-coil installed to save the block, but I would get the water leak squared away before I tightened it down too much again... I had the top end rebuilt on my '75 Cadillac and discovered that it had several of them from previous "work."
Ouch! That looks nasty. Getting out a broken easy-out can be very difficult. Once the block is messed up that bad I don't know of anything you can do short of taking it to a machine shop and let them perform their magic. I'm sure it can be saved but maybe not in the home shop.
yeah i know about heli-coil but the hole now is offset the ez out didnt want to be drilled i figured a sure a machine shop could weld and redrill and tap the hole , but like i said the bottom end is nothing special at all...so i dont know its probely coming out
I would say that's going to need professional help. The obvious fix is to weld up and redrill and tap the hole, but that's easier said then done. Especially when it comes to a gasket surface.
Take a 3/8" nut, hold it over the hole, fill the nut and hole with weld, let cool til the metal turns back grey, remove the nut and remainder of the bolt/easyout by simply unscrewing with the nut. Once the bolt remains are out, then install a heli coil if it's needed.
i broke an ez-out once and took it to a friend to see what he would suggest...he took a...flat punch...and hit it once. the ez-out shattered. then he welded a nut onto the broke off bolt and backed it out... ...:Handshake...
may be wrong but it looks to me like it broke deep down into the hole. Not where you are going to be able to weld a nut on.
If you look closely at the picture, the hole you see is not where the original hole was at. It is slightly offset. This likely happened because the easy out is harder then the the block, which caused the bit to walk to the side of it and drill the softer metal instead. If there are any remains of the easy out still there, they are what you see in the upper left portion of the hole. The problem is beyond trying to weld a nut on and backing it out. My approach would be to drill the hole out with the next size larger bit to be sure any remains of the easy out are gone, then weld the hole up. Re-drill and tap the hole.
You can weld to the easy out and bolt at the same time. You could take it to a machine shop and that is what they would try first. There is a special rod made by "Certainium" to weld a bolt that is as deep as 1/2 inch in a hole to a nut placed over a washer on top of the surface. Put a nut down - centered over the bolt and easy-out. Put a nut (larger than the head of the bolt was) on top of the washer. Use a near-by bolt hole to clamp a piece of brass over the edge of the nut to hold it in place. Then weld the top of the broken bolt and fill the hole with your weld without welding it to the sides. Fill the hole up to the top of the nut making sure to weld the sides of the nut into the puddle of weld. Take your time but do it in one weld - don't stop and start again. once it cools the bolt should turn out fairly easily. If that fails then take it to a good machine shop that can use a diamond bit or two (expect to pay for them) in a mill to get the broken bolt out the hard way. There is one other way to fix it: gouge the bolt and easy-out out of the block with an air-arc gouging rod and furnace braze the hole completely closed. Then using a mill, bore the hole and tap for and install a heli-coil.
If you use a MIG or TIG, this operation is a piece of cake. If using an Arc welder, then you'll need a thin rod. And there's no need to use a washer, the weld will not stick to the cast iron block material in the time taken to fill the hole with weld.
When I have been brought stuff like this I always used a tap burner to remove the easy out. It uses an electric current to overheat the material and melt it down, basically the same concept as running an arc welder too hot. You can also do it with an arc welder and some hot rod the slag cleans out fairly easy due to the dissimilar materials. As for the offset hole you might try a king-sert (not a common name it is what we always called them in the fab shops) basically you would drill and tap the hole out to something like a 1/2-13 UNC then screw a stud of similar material in and braize the stud in then you machine the stud flat to the surface and re-drill and re-tap the original hole. The problem for most users is first they don't have the ability to weld the cast Iron especially with dissimilar materials. Then they don't have the ability to machine the surface flat and to drill and tap the hole perpendicular to the gasket surface. Best recourse try to keep the gasket surface flat and maybe you can try to get a heli-coil to hold. Then use JB weld to fill the extra hole in the block it is not a primary stress point so it should be fine,(the jeep people have been using JBWeld to fill coolant ports for years) There are alot better ways to do this but it would probably work in an emergency.
