Broken LS Exhaust Bolt Removal - Best Trick Ever!

hey what's happening guys nick with classic nation today i'm going to give you a tech tip broken exhaust bolts in your ls engine or really any engine for that matter that's got aluminum heads here's a quick and easy way that i've found to get those exhaust bolts extracted without screwing up your cylinder heads stay tuned [Music] all right let's get after it now i've actually got two broken exhaust studs on this engine a lot of these ls engines when you get them out of a junkyard they're going to have exhaust bolts that are going to be either broken or breaking when you take them off the reality is that it's kind of a bad design where the back heats up a ton the cylinder heads and these back bolts are really prone to breaking um again i've had done this a couple of times on ls swaps and almost always one of these back bolts is going to break especially if it's you know 100 000 mile engine exhaust bolts have never been out they get a little corrosion they freeze up in there and then they break and it's a pain in the butt you can see this back bolt is actually below the surface of the head which is kind of a pain in the butt um right next to it i've got the perfect example of a bolt that's broken above the surface of the head so this is the perfect opportunity to show the two different ways that i attack this now we're doing this in real time this may or may not work if this is a total fail and it doesn't work you'll never see this video assuming everything goes right here's how we do it the first one the one that's sticking out again pretty straightforward get the exhaust manifold off and i like to use vice grips sometimes i'll put a little wd-40 or something like that on the stud for a day or two um you could certainly try heat if you think it's going to be super difficult but in most cases pulling the exhaust manifold off of there hitting it with a little wd or penetrating oil and then getting a pair of vice grips and actually just trying to clamp it on there super tight and then rotate it slowly that's going to be my uh process on this one that's exposed now the one that's below the surface gonna be a little bit difficult um i'm gonna show you how to do it with a welder now i do this obviously this engine is out of the car or the truck that it's gonna be going in the reality is you can do this in a car or truck it's going to be super tight and super difficult depending on the application to do it with any kind of space but the same principle applies this is the best way to do it if it's below i don't like to drill it and do the tap and die or the easy out bolt extractor kind of a setup for fear that i'll damage the threads on this aluminum head so this is the way to do it without uh the risk or minimizing the risk of actually screwing the threads up so here we go let's get after the first one all right here we go let's see first thing let's get these guys adjusted i'm probably gonna the first grab i'll grab is obviously super tight as i can but i'll probably just see if it's gonna even move a little bit like this before i switch it okay that doesn't seem like it's wanting to do anything so let's try it like this again you're going to have to get this super tight so it bites really nice okay i didn't do anything there we go got a little movement that time i'm gonna reposition let's see what we do you really got to get this tight on those draws to get it to move here obviously it's spinning so that's a good sign the key is just take it nice and slow get those jaws on there as good as you can started to go and then didn't want to so now i'm kind of rounding the bolt which is not a good a good thing but it is coming easy does it come on baby come on baby come on baby now we're talking easy does it come on baby that's what i'm talking about boom if that's not satisfying bolt extraction i don't know what is well i do know what is but bingo dingo now we're cooking one down one to go this was the easy one so here we go all right so for this little endeavor i've got the welder fired up i've just got a little lincoln powermig 180 um dual so i've got it set i've got mine set to about two and a half and between e and f again i'm going a little hotter than i normally would here i'm not a master welder but the the idea here is you want to get really good penetration on these first couple of stacks of these first couple of stabs on on top of that bolt and what we're going to try to do basically is just lay a bead and lay attack straight on top of the bolt head there so that's going to be the focus we're going to just stack the first one's going to be you know good penetration then we're going to stack on top of that we're basically going to build that out now because this head is aluminum and the bolt is steel it's going to weld to the steel and it's not going to hit the aluminum we're still going to try to focus it where it needs to be on the bolt head but there's it's not going to stick which is why this works on aluminum heads so the same thing you might be able to pull with steel old iron heads on a normal engine that old-school engine but you'd have to be really careful not to get it on and stick your bolt and weld it and get yourself in a pickle so this specifically works well for ls engines so i'm all geared up i'm just going to go ahead and get it a couple stabs the key here is the first one we're going to get good penetration um i've often also got the cylinders because the exhaust manifolds off i've got some tissues and towels actually kind of stuffed in there so that nothing no slag or anything gets into the uh exhaust ports into the where it doesn't or it shouldn't be so here we go let's try and give it a couple stabs and see what happens not perfect [Music] okay so i've made a little bit of a mess there i'm going to put a little more on top because my beef droop down again i don't have the heat probably right okay so that's about as good as that's gonna get so now i'll turn off the welder and now let's see again this isn't this isn't a pretty job in it nor is it supposed to be the the benefit of this approach uh is and i've had success with this before is that's really well heat soaked now which does a pretty good job of breaking the corrosion the difference in metal temperatures the aluminum head acts as a heat sink and so it really pushes out the heat really really well um so it's you don't have to worry too much you don't want to put you don't want to crazy overdo it but you don't have to worry too much about what you're about overdoing the heat like you would with a steel head so again we'll see here pretty quickly if this is even gonna work nope just broke right off okay so that's our first try i'm gonna go ahead and give it a little more heat and see if that does the trick i don't think i had the heat correct foreign so just building it out a little bit [Music] hmm so that's the key if at first you don't succeed give up no just kidding if first you don't succeed try that sucker again i'm gonna let that cool a little bit here and then we'll try our luck come on baby who knows one of these days you might get lucky boom well this is how it's done there is almost no better feeling in automotive than what i just did right there you guys know the feeling when you've done it too perfect that could have been a real nightmare and now we've got it out it was completely beneath the surface of the head we've pulled it out no issue with the threads everything is perfect good to go man that is a huge relief so i hope that was helpful to you guys the little tip and trick keep you from having to pull your engine or replace the head this is again again an ls engine super simple you saw me fail two times on the weld i turned up the heat ended up between f and a half and and three as far as welder settings go but again use your own judgment but i basically i knew the weld wasn't actually get penetrating enough for on those first couple that broke off um and so then i cranked up the heat to get a little bit better penetration that last one stuck so we are good to go man that's a huge relief i hope this was helpful if it was if this was even slightly helpful to you guys you're going to try it um please consider subscribing to our channel it's all about classic cars automotive stuff tech tips just like this one thanks so much see you guys in the next video [Music]

Channel: Classic Nation

Views: 1,736,417

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Id: Oqs-08ATRyU

Length: 13min 55sec (835 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 07 2021