The thing came out fine. It's definitely the hole in the frame, driver side. It threads maybe a few turns and catches. Any ideas on how to fix this easily? Thought about forcing it in with an impact, but that would probably just destroy stuff.

 

Clean/repair it with a tap? Problem is I bet it's impossible to source the right tap locally.

I had that same issue on my mom's car where her crossmember bolts to the undercarriage. It eventually stripped and I had to just drill it larger and helicoil it and then use a standard bolt since I couldn't find any metric stuff locally.

If you can wait a few days try to find a tap and die set online if they're not prohibitively expensive. If not, and you're resigned to needing a repair (ie you're sure you won't be able to thread it in without stripping), might as well go ahead and helicoil it.

 

Does Texas law prohibit the use of the metric system? If so, hopefully it's not punishable by the death penalty I see metric tap/dies nuts and bolts all over the place. Home Depot, Harbor Freight, Lowes, True Value, even Fred Meyer carries metric hardware. I assume you know what Fred Meyer is since you've been to OR.

 

I had to heli-coil one of the lower control arm bolts. That stuff is expensive but I did it.

 

Haha yeah it's legal here (I think ).

I can't remember what size it was I needed for my mom's car (Hyundai) but nooooobody had it. I went to Lowes, HD, Ace, all the auto parts stores, etc. All of those places do carry metric stuff but it's certainly not an exhaustive offering by any means. Even their standard offerings are pretty limited. The Ace by me has the best selection of the chain stores, although it seems like all of them really carry about the exact same stuff and most of them even had virtually the exact same display/setup.

And I have actually been to Fred Meyer! Lol

 

Sorry, I had to poke a little fun at good ole Texas You might be right though, the tap/die sets at the hardware stores are the 5 pc Irvin sets which don't include any large sizes. I just assume that there are singles available, or at the very least a more robust set. HF might be the only place with full metric sets. Still need to buy myself one of those, but every time I go there I talk myself out of buying a ton of stuff that I don't need at the time

 

You should look into TIME SERTS. These are better than doing the heli coil repair.