I was changing the coolant in my Max and now I can't get the front engine coolant bolt back in. I am guessing that the engine block needs to be re-threaded....

What's weird is that I can get the bolt in half way by hand and then it begins to strip. I thought that some dirt had gotten in the threads so I cleaned the threads with a pipe cleaner but that didn't help either. I guess I am going to have to take it in but was wondering about the cost of something like this....

 

bolt holes for coolant on the block? uhhhhhh..... no such thing, bud.
anyway, shouldn't cost too much if all they have to do is run a tap down the hole. take the bolt to a parts store or machine shop supply house and see if you can buy or rent the tap to do it. small ones are only a few bucks, but large ones can easily get to be 20-30$... may want to rent that one.

 

They are on the block, Matt....

(figure 7)
http://www.cybrrpartspro.com/Chilton...61CH01_44.HTML

I may have not used the correct term, though. They are correctly called the drain plugs.......

I have a tap but I can't get it to the plug.

 

Its not actually on the block...it drains the block.

 

LOL...what?!

there's a bolt that's bolted to the ACTUAL block of the engine. MANY MANY don't bother with it..it's too far buried in the car to even try and loosen.

then theres the air bleeder bolt on the intake area

and the drain petcock..(stop giggling).

so YES there's a drain bolt ON THE actual block.

i can't open that page so i'm going to assume this is VG.

 

VE Dano. It's good to see people are making use of the link. Or maybe Smith found the link before. From what I can tell it IS on the block just left of the front motor mount?

 

DO NOT go to a dealer to get a hole tapped. I got charged $120 to tap the cam seal bolt holes. So easy to get to. I was ****ED, especially because they told me they had to extract the bolts. Little did they know I had removed the bolts BY HAND the day before, I put them back in even though they were stripped out. Damn that dealership. Anyway, do it yourself if you can, it's easy and will save you some $$.

 

I now know(but too late for me)that it would have been easier to:

A. Open the petcock and bleeder screw and drain the coolant.

B. Put a hose(running water) in the radiator and flush it with the engine running.

C. Once you see clear water coming out of the petcock, stop the engine and let the water drain out.

D. Close the Petcock.

E. Refill with coolant until you see coolant come out of the hole where the bleeder screw was taken out....

.....But I went by the more difficult directions in the haynes manual.....and stripped the drain bolt that is on the front side of the engine block.

I guess I'll take it to a mechanic friend of mine and see if he can tap a slightly larger bolt hole or maybe just clear the way for the old bolt to go back in(with thread sealer of course).

 

I have a tap, I just can't get it to the hole because of the bolt that is above and to the right of the drain plug.

 

for those of us with netscape, spaces in the URL are bad....


First time I've ever seen anybody actually mess with that thing. no need, really. (as you've already stated)

Anyway, you can pull the engine mount loose and get to it- doesn't look THAT hard to get to. I'd rather do that than tow the car to a mechanic and them pay them to do the job. what a PIA.

 

look for something called helicoil. good luck.

 

I'm using Phoenix(derivative of Mozilla(derivative of Netscape)) and I don't seem to have problems with spaces but each browser has it's anomalies.

I followed the instructions in the Chilton Manual(I accidentally said Haynes earlier).......mistake......

I don't have a leak right now(after tightening it about 3/4 of the way and putting some sealer on the threads) so I will probably wait until I see a leak and re-tap it then. I'll keep a jug of 50/50 antifreeze and a socket set in the back of my car just in case but it's not leaking now.

I have worked on numerous things on this car and this is the first bolt I have ever stripped. I guess I should have picked a day where I had more time and it wasn't 40 degrees outside. I probably would have taken my time and not made such a stupid mistake.....

 

You could run an extension on the tap/die you would use. Especially when you say the first part of the threads are okay. You just get it started carefully and then chase the rest of the bad threads.

 

That's what I will do but I have to remove the motor mount bolt to get a good angle to tap into the existing hole.... That's the PIA part....