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Posted by Joe Gustafson on Saturday, June 14, 2008 at 19:46:54 :
In Reply to: Differential with broken bolts, stripped threads posted by Joe Gustafson on Monday, June 09, 2008 at 22:50:53 :
For anyone still following this thread...
I wound up slightly enlarging the center hole and running a tap through it. Not as large as the original, but it's better than nothing and doesn't have any of the complications of drilling it to the original size. Then I ran a tap down that hole and put a Grade 8 bolt in it, just slightly smaller than the original.
I was able to do this to the bottom hole with relatively little difficulty. The other bottom hole with the partially stripped threads, I just put a longer bolt in it for now (there was room to do so). For the side bolts one of them I tapped just like the bottom one, but then when i was on the last hole, I managed to break the tap off in the hole. Dang.
The good news is that there's still some of the tap sticking out, and I'm optimistic that I'll be able to turn it out of there with the right tools. But, even if I'm not, I'm up to 7 of 8 bolts, a much better improvement over the 4.5 I had holding it in there before. I'll still try to get the 8th taken care of, but at least I'm not afraid to drive it now.
Thanks to everyone that responded for the input. I've also learned what a Heli-Coil is and that can be plan B in the event that any of these fail.