My First 240, My First Problem

[jrmiller84]

So I bought my first 240 this past Saturday, a red 89 hatchback and it's amazing to drive. Got the car for 1900$ and everything is in immaculate condition, interior is perfect, ac works, power windows and locks work, drives great, and has not been in a wreck minus a dent in the front passenger fender from someone backing into it.

ANYWAYS, I expected to have some problems with it since it's such an old car so I'm not freaking' out about this too much. I've done quite a bit of research on the problem and I've only found mixed responses. When I bought the car the guy showed me that it had a very small oil leak due to a bad valve cover gasket, no big deal. So the other day I started preparing to do a bunch of preventative maintenance on it and I went to try and tighten down the bolts that hold the valve cover down and low and behold, the infamous stripped valve cover bolts. Almost half of them just kept spinning (I don't know how the hell someone stripped that many, but whatever). So I've done my research on helicoils and I'm fairly confident I can do it on my own but I can't seem to find a definitive answer on the correct size helicoil to use. In this thread(zerothread?id=105906) I saw them recommend two separate sizes, 12 - 1.25 metric and 6 - 1 metric. Does anyone have a definitive answer on this or know any resources. I may have a shop do it for me next week if I can but I would like to do it myself if possible just incase it ever happens to something else.

Oh, I almot forgot, I did check to make sure the bolts are Ok and they are, if you look down the hole where the bolt goes it almost looks like someone yanked out the bolt with a pair of vice grips. I can barely see any threads in there, only remnants of them.

[180fan]

wow an m12x1.25 is rather large for a valve cover bolt. I'd suspect you'd be much better off with the m6x1.00 you've listed. Not totally sure the size of those threads though, take it to a hardware shop and try the next size up from what the old valve cover bolts were before.

[jrmiller84]

Are you suggesting putting a larger bolt in and not helicoiling it? I was under a strong impression that that was not a good idea.

[jrmiller84]

So I take it that's a negative? I've been looking since I posted and I still can't seem to find anything on a definite size. m12 does seem super high as you said.

[180fan]

go for the helicoil or the tapping. in this case it's more of "pick your poison." Probably the helicoil is the better choice though. Make sure you get the right size for the kit though which is why I was suggesting double checking at the hardware store or at the nuts and bolts section of your autoparts store before commiting to the helicoil kit you were referring to.

[amolao]

this is a fairly cheap fix and a new lesson for you, yes aluminum strips rather easy..... find the same size as the original OEM bolts when getting the new helicoil threads...you can go diferrents size but it up to how much material you have when retapping the damaged holes and then you are obligated to get new bolts to go with that....If you are not confident when messing with helicoils, have a machine shop or good mechanic do it for you...Also check to see if you need a new valve cover gasket before you put everything back together,,,,sorry I can give you the right helicoil size but you can take the bolts to your local auto parts and check by using their bolt "sizer"

[wiggerman]

Well usually the reason for the valve cover gasket leaking besides old age is a bad PCV valve so replace that bad boy too, they are cheap and will save this from happening again