how to take out broken piece of bolt?

[TheOne]

ok here's the setting, 1 of the bolts that go with the camshaft cap broke leavin about 3 threads inside where it goes. the cap is the last 1 on the exhaust cam(cap #5 or 6 i believe), this is on a 96 ka head.

any way of taking it out without havin to take it to a machine shop(as i've allready installed the head & torqued it, or can i still take it out without damagin the head gasket?, it hasn't been turned on or anything, brand new gasket), i have tried those drill bits called easy out but that didn't help, anything else i could try?

[onosqv]

drill a small hole into center of the broken bolt, and try again w/ either an easy out or heavier duty counter sinc.

[ShionS14]

go to a hardware store or auto store, they will have bolt extracting bits to put in a drill to yank it out. works great, i actually broke three bolts off when i was replacing my cams oh so many years ago. but that was because i was using the original bolts now i know better!

[TheOne]

tried those, didn't work.

guess my last resort would be to drill & use helicoils.

[TheOne]

ok i read on the heli-coil instructions for my bolt, the camshaft cap bolt is an M6x1, and it says in the instructions that i have to drill a hole with a 1/4 size drill bit(.250), is that right?

[Ni2s4s0aSnX]

Just drill it out.

[UK-SRi]

get hold of a lft hand drill bit that is just a little smaller than the diameter of the thread troughs, when you drill it out it should back out when you get near the bottom as its not gripping the hole anymore.

Mike

[Ni2s4s0aSnX]

My drill does that anyway. When I had to drill out a bolt I drilled through it, then popped the drill in reverse, and the bolt spun right out.

[sidewards]

I've used "easy" outs before and they have never worked for me. luckily, I've never had a bolt break off in the engine before, so I could just drill, re-tap and thread lock.

[Globalsilence]

Left handed drill bits will work perfect, remember you have to use the drill in reverse to get the bolt out. If the bolt is sticking out at all you can weld a nut on the end and just pull it out.

[tiger]

and I thought my rebuild was going to be flawless... I just had this happen to me.. it's comforting to know that it has happened before to someone else. I am not wasting my mula on an easy out cos those things suck.. well, they would suck for this job...I guess i'll just have to take your advice and go buy this drill bit... my bolt for the #5 camshaft retainer broke off (the longest bolt in the set)... it wouldn't screw in all the way and it was getting hard so my dumb butt kept turning the thing and then it got loose... OOPS! pull it out and it has broken.. most of the threads are in there except for maybe 4 or 5. I dont want to re-try putting in that long bolt.. I think i'm going to just get some more medium sized ones. Can anyone tell me why the thing wouldn't screw in... i had the bolt in the right place but when it got hard to turn there was still a big gap between the head of the bolt and the cylinder head camshaft bolt hole...yea. .. why is that?

[LayNLow240]

and I thought my rebuild was going to be flawless... I just had this happen to me.. it's comforting to know that it has happened before to someone else. I am not wasting my mula on an easy out cos those things suck.. well, they would suck for this job...I guess i'll just have to take your advice and go buy this drill bit... my bolt for the #5 camshaft retainer broke off (the longest bolt in the set)... it wouldn't screw in all the way and it was getting hard so my dumb butt kept turning the thing and then it got loose... OOPS! pull it out and it has broken.. most of the threads are in there except for maybe 4 or 5. I dont want to re-try putting in that long bolt.. I think i'm going to just get some more medium sized ones. Can anyone tell me why the thing wouldn't screw in... i had the bolt in the right place but when it got hard to turn there was still a big gap between the head of the bolt and the cylinder head camshaft bolt hole...yea. .. why is that?

maybe there was something inside the hole that was keeping the bolt from going all the way in?

[tiger]

you may be right... I think I may go out and peep inside there and have a look at the other hole.. it was kinda doing the same thing.. really hard to tighten down... I'm now going to have to drill the rest of the **** out and re-tap it.. I spent too many dollars today on stuff that didn't work. I'm not going to try to put those long bolts in again.. im gonna use the medium ones. (i'm rebuilding an SR20det...) i didn't know if you guys knew. Those 2 long bolts just didn't want to go in easy for some reason, it kinda messed up the whole day. Thank you for suggesting that... I just couldn't figure out why both of the long bolts in the #5 retainers wouldn't hand tighten... :-/

[tiger]

one other thing... I think I might have to drill out that broken piece and re-tap.. I was thinking about getting a helicoil to put in but I have no idea where to pick a helicoil kit up... would that be better than actually retapping the aluminum?