While doing a head swap on a 95 LT1 we ran into a problem... The car had a blown head gasket in the forward area of the passanger side head. The bolt came out clean but was very tough to get out. When putting the new heads back on the block, the new ARP bolt would only thread half way and become very tight. We took the head back off and began to tap the engine block. The tap worked fine and the ARP bolt threaded just like it should. but when we put the Head back onto the block, the ARP bolt would thread nicely untill it was flush with the head any any more wrenching and the bolt would simply spin free without any resistance. When we unscrewed the ARP bolt it took out some metal shards with it.

What do we do now? We were in the process of tourqing all the bolts down in order and this is #14 in the process.

Do we helicoil it? Can we still do it with the head on the car?

We need help as quick as possible!

 

Ya will have to helicoil it and no the head needs to come off and the gasket replaced if it was torqued. Ya need to check to see if the bolts are bottoming out inside the block too.
They make another thread fixer and I think it's thread zert or something like that. I borrowed one from the machine shop to repair a hole and it worked good.

 

Time-sert maybe?

 

Yep - Time-sert is what I would use in that situation.

http://www.threadkits.com/timeserts/timeserts.html

 

That's it---the mind is the second thing to go when ya get older.

 

Sorry about the first thing.

 

Yea me too. It's hard to see without glasses.