Today's torque lesson (yep, I made a booboo)

[Safety Guy]

I'm back from Canada as of Monday evening and I wasted all of yesterday (on vacation).

I'm finishing my B6 prep.

I made a mistake. ops:

I was torqueing the valve cover bolts and was wondering why I seemed to be turning them a lot. Then on the left rear corner bolt (looking from the engine front reading "MAZDA"), I heard...

SNAP!

I fingered that bolt and it came out. Broken.

I relooked at the torque specs.

INCH POUNDS, YOU DUMMY, NOT FOOT POUNDS!!!!

Okay, one corner valve cover bolt is broken. The threaded part of it is in the head. How important is this? Will it leak that bad?

I suppose I can wait until the swap is over before I fix, or get someone else to fix it?

Embarrassed,

Karl

[gdawgs]

Oooh yeah, that'll do it. Hey we all make mistakes and we learn from them(hopefully). I bet from now on, you'll always double check the units.

It's probably going to leak pretty bad, could also warp the valve cover.

Shouldn't be too tough to get out. Do you own a set of "easy outs"? If not, run down and pick up a set, they don't cost that much. You'll probably want to do the drilling with the valve cover in place so you don't get a bunch of steel filings in the engine(that would be an even bigger mistake).

[Safety Guy]

Ah yes, I've seen Sears have "broken screw extractors" on sale. I'll call them to see about that.

Since I did reinstall the valve cover I would love to leave it in place while I fix this little mistake!

Thanks Gdawg.

Karl

[gdawgs]

Another thing to check. I can't remember off the top of my head so I'd have to look to be sure, but I believe some of the valve cover bolts actually stick through the head, kind of like a small flange(I could be wrong). If so, you could just keep turning the bolt on the bottom side with a pliers until it comes through.

[Safety Guy]

Yep, that one does. I'll go try that one, but there's not a lot of room. I have several needlenose pliars to try though.

Thanks again,

Karl

[darkdan]

I did that once while unscrewing one. I don't get it either.

Anyways, I had a small amount sticking out of the head. So I just grapped it with small vise grips and unthreaded it.

Then I bought a new bolt and retapped the head.

[mattswabb]

I've removed many broken bolts in my life using a center punch and a hammer.

Take a sharp punch and put a little dimple on the top of the broken bolt towards the edge, not in the center. Then tilt the punch about 45° so that if you hit it you'll be spinning the bolt ccw. The position of the punch is the key. Make an imaginary line from the center of the bolt to your center punch mark and position the punch perpendicular to it at all times. Then start lightly tapping it and follow it around till you can get some vise grips on it.

This usually works unless you've bottomed out the bolt into a blind hole.

matt

[Safety Guy]

Thanks for the responses guys.

I got it out. Went to Sears and bought a broken screw extractor set, a small Cobalt drill bit, and a small centerpunch. The salesman told me how to do it.

I didn't have to take the valve cover back off, thankfully! I centerpunched what was left of the bolt to dimple it, then I carefully drilled into it about a 1/4 of an inch. Then I used the extractor, turning it with my small Visegrips. It worked!

My B6 is ready for Festiva parts to be put on it.

Now the question is whether or not I'll have the balls to start taking my 1.3 out tomorrow!

Yep, it's intimidating.

Karl

[25Horseplay]

Your halfway there! Just take the Festy's motor out, I believe you can do it!

[mechanicaldj]

just wait until you put the B6 in , and you break any or all of the studs in the exhaust system :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

[4cylDreadnaught]

lefthanded drill bit

[bryanl1]

Broken bolts are a ball of fun ain't they? I just snapped two rusted bolts off of my exhaust manifold last week. 1 came out with an easy out, the other I had to drill out and heli-coil.

[Safety Guy]

I already have the B6 exhaust manifold off and no bolts or studs were broken in the process!

If I break any off the B3 when it comes out I won't worry about it.

Karl

[skeeters_keeper]

the front-center bolt on my b3's valve cover is twisted off... its been that way since i got it. leaks a lil oil, but not bad and we've put a lil over 10k on it since we bought it (i have no idea how long its been that way). mabye i'll get around to fixing it sooner or later :roll:

[Safety Guy]

For the record, I took off one of my B3 valve cover bolts and tried it on the B6. It might be made to work but it didn't look good. There's a spacer for the bolt itself on the B3. Probably a feature of the older block style like on the earlier engines.

I'll just have to get one off a 323. Unless someone knows if the valve cover bolts from a BP or B6DE would work?

Hell, I still have to get an airbox and an ECU, too. I just need to find a local later model 323! I may look today.

Karl