The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Engine Shop Broken off valve cover bolt?

All,

I had a broken off valve cover bolt in one of my heads and the guy that cut that out has drilled into the water jacket and tapped threads back into it. Well after I saw that I figured that I might as well be looking for some heads. Bad thing about it is there are 300 hp heads on a 1967 - 327 so chance of getting a replacement is slim to none and extremely costly. And the motor is all built and ready to go.. I did not see that stupid broken bold until I was ready to start putting my valve covers back on.
Is there any chance that a valve cover bolt will stop that water?

Use pipe dope.Or better yet J-B Weld. Stud it and use a bolt

Thanks Mr Beaver 53. Would i just coat the threads with JB Weld and run it down in?

If he drilled and tapped deep enough, and there are enough threads I would use some red loc-tite on a small allen set screw, put that in at the bottom of the hole as a plug, leaving enough room for the regular screw on top of it. Should never have to worry about it again.

Grigg

MICHEAL, griggs idea is very good if you have enough thread depth. but if that doesnt work just use some rtv silicone sealer. i see that all the time at the dealership i work at. alot of the new aluminumn engines and heads have bolts on them that go into water ports and jackets and with what your talking about a blob of sealer in the hole and then another blob on the bolt before you run it in should solve your problem. be sure to avoid the jb weld unless your are ONLY going to use the stud as mr beaver had mentioned otherwise you with never get a regular hex bolt back out if you need too.
~army truck

Michael1964,

WOW, I don't have a SB head handy, but my memory banks sure don't put those little 1/4" holes near any water jacket. Maybe I have poor memory banks!

Have you seen this hole puke water or are you just going on the gentleman's word that "deep drilled" the hole!

Stuart

Howdy, Guys,

Sorry i have been slow on updating the folks on what the out come was. I did for sure have a hole that went into the water jacket on the head. I filled with water and watched it squirt out. I ended up getting some of that Epoxy steel and filled the hole and re-tapped it. I have started the motor several times and gotten it up to temp and have not seen any issues with it. I was planning to use JB Weld but I found some stuff that had listed it was for cast iron block and the temp rating was better than i could find on the JB Weld.
I think I am all set now... thanks for the suggestions. BTY, I put studs in all the valve cover bolts and i loved the way that turned out. I wished I had thought to do that before on some other things.