I was removing my Exhaust manifold and I have encountered a bit of a snag on the driver side. I was able to remove all the bolts except the second one from the rear. This bolt is very corroded and I can't even tell what size it should be. So I tired different sizes and I am not having any luck. The head is almost rusted round so I tired the bolt remover sockets from sears but they need to be hammered on.

I am looking for advice or tips on getting this bolt out, if I don't find any other way to get this bolt I will be pulling the motor. That is not what I want to be doing, the car only has 42,000 on it and I am not doing performance mods so I should not have to pull the motor.

Any help would be great.

 

Did you try PB blaster? That stuff works wonders. Soak the bolt and wait a little while, then try again. If possible start the car and let it heat the manifold, don't worry about the smoke. If PB Blaster doesn't loosten it nothing will. Good luck.

 

I agree try the PB Blaster let it soak for awhile, then heat up the bolts with a torch and squirt them off with water very quickly. This is what I ended up doing, the constant heating and cooling loosened the rust, and I just used a pair of vice grips to turn the bolt. Good luck.

 

Well I will give it a couple of good soaks with the pb blaster and see what happens, hopefully I will end up with a bolt head I can turn. It just looks like I an going to need a good solution to turing a seriously stuck round bolt head with no room to hammer a socket on.

Anybody have any other methods of turning a rounded bolt head?

 

Like said above,ViseGrips(not some cheap lookalike).Or a Clench wrench from Sears should do it.

 

The problem with vice grips is no room, no room to get the jaws on and no room to turn if I could. What is a clench wrench? I have never heard of it, I have the "bolt-out" tool but that has to be hammered on and there is now room.

I really hate the limited space to work on this thing.

Thanks for the ideas.

 

I've heard of people welding a shorty extension to a rounded out bolt, then using a ratchet on the extension to remove said bolt.

I'm not sure if you have enough room to actually weld a short extension to that bolt, but it's an idea.

If memory serves, the size of the manifold bolts is 9/16"

Thomas.

 

The Clench wrench works kinda like a pipe wrrench,The harder you turn it the better it grips.I havent had manifolds in a while.You may have to get a little creative with the tools,ie use a pipe for leverage BFH,etc.Sometimes you just have to get mean with stuff,expierence helps too.

 

Thanks for tips guys I might get lucky. All the bolts were 9/16 but this one seems smaller like 1/2 so who knows what size it should be.

As for exprience I have plenty of that working on cars but I was hoping to tap into some others to maybe try something I haven't thought of yet.

Thanks for all of your suggestions I have few ideas and small hopes that I will try maybe I will get lucky.

 

I know which one you are talking about. There is no room. I can barely get my hand in there.

They should be 9/16 as was said. You could try different point sockets (6 or 12) A smaller 12 point (1/2?) may go on and grip tight, but may strip the head even more if its on really tight.

Let the PB soak also for quite a while. If you can get anything on the bolt head, then a 90 degree swivle joint or something to an extension maybe you could give it some hits with a hammer just to send some shock waves down and loosen the rust.

Best I can do. Good luck.

 

The uni-joint is not a bad idea. What I was thinking was soaking it withe the pb blaster and removing the steering joint so I had more room to maybe hammer. But adding in a univerisal joint might help even more. Sounds like a good Idea thanks.