rounded off corroded oil pan bolts

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94silvermark

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Hey everyone i am prepping my new motor to install later this week. This evening i was removing the oil pan bolts to install a new gasket and 3 of them rounded off thanks to corrosion caused by satanic road salt. I have thus far tried penetrating oil, vice grips, welding a nut on, a big pair of channel locks, and heating with a little blow torch. Can i just heat it up with a rosebud or will this damage the block? If it were iron i would have used my oxy acetylene torch on it already. I don't want to melt the bolt boss by applying too much heat.
 
Man you are psychic i used that very penetrating oil but to no avail. I resprayed them so we will see if they move in the morning.
 
Did you give them a 10-20 second blast?

Supposed to spray the bolt until its Frosty.. The idea is to temp-shrink the bolt, so 1 or 2 little squirts and then letting it sit isn't how this stuff is used.. Read the Directions on the can
 
A drill and a FOUR SIDED "easy-out" are gonna be your best bet to get that out. The traditional spiral easy-outs don't work because they thread themselves in, and expand the fastener. This makes getting the fastener out impossible and leads to breaking the tool. The four sided ones don't do that.

Or just drill the bolt out completly and heli-coil it.
 
Careful with the heat, too much and the bolt will come out with the alum thread.
Then you will be stuck drilling, tapping.

Try slight heat with wax after tacking on a nut, move bolt back and forth.... don't force it out.
You might have to put wax on two to three times just heating the steel bolt.

Good luck
 
Sapperfire said:
Did you give them a 10-20 second blast?

Supposed to spray the bolt until its Frosty.. The idea is to temp-shrink the bolt, so 1 or 2 little squirts and then letting it sit isn't how this stuff is used.. Read the Directions on the can
Click to expand...

Yes about 10 seconds, i will try going to 20.
 
-stew- said:
A drill and a FOUR SIDED "easy-out" are gonna be your best bet to get that out. The traditional spiral easy-outs don't work because they thread themselves in, and expand the fastener. This makes getting the fastener out impossible and leads to breaking the tool. The four sided ones don't do that.

Or just drill the bolt out completly and heli-coil it.
Click to expand...

I have had too many bad experiences with easy outs, i find they only work if the fastener is pretty loose but broken below the surface of a part. Considering the torque i had to apply to the other bolts to break them free an easy out would just snap leaving a bit of hardened steel there to prevent any drilling out.
 
94silvermark said:
I have had too many bad experiences with easy outs, i find they only work if the fastener is pretty loose but broken below the surface of a part. Considering the torque i had to apply to the other bolts to break them free an easy out would just snap leaving a bit of hardened steel there to prevent any drilling out.
Click to expand...

If that's the case then you'regonna have to **** or get off the pot. Its gonna take work to get that bolt out. Heat might do it, but not usually in aluminium. Usually in aluminium its a chemical bond from two dissimilar metals reacting to each other. Just drill it out. A lot of the time if you accept the fact that something has to be done the hard way, and you dive in and do it; that's easier than trying 37 different easy ways to do something.
 
Well i got them all out. It was a matter of grinding off the bolt head flanges reducing friction and giving a path to melt paraffin wax into the threads with a blow torch. They unscrewed with a pair of channel locks very easily after that. So it was easy after all. Oil pan was chewed up during the process but it's rusted out anyway so no harm done.
 
I always wonder why the pan bolts are on so tight. Every time I pull an oil pan I fear bolt heads are going to snap off. I have to reef on them so hard.
 
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