starter bolt hole busted on engine block,,

[Fast68Chevy]

short of a welder and praying is there anyway that anyone knows of repairing busted engine block(SBC) hole for starter mounting ?

thanks for anything

[wbmorris87]

Any good fabrication shop should be able to weld it up, and drill and re-tap it, bad news, engines gonna have to come out.

[mikep]

Ive nickel arc welded enough blocks to know it can be done while in the car. Its just not any fun. taking it out and tearing it down is an option although you may be able to do it assembled if its not broken too bad.

If its just stripped you can use a thread repair bushing or a (yuk) helicoil. Drill it oversized, tap it 7/16 coarse and then use the thread repair bushing. If the block section is broken off entirely then your'e kind of screwed unless you have enough meat on the block to use a straight bolt pattern starter with the smaller flywheel. Of course one of those weird looking aftermarket hi tork starters with the 500 different bolt patterns might work for you if you really want to run the bigger flywheel. Just drill a new hole to match one of the ones on the starter base. You could always run a manual tranny with the old style 3 bolt starter that bolts to the transmission

[Benrs86]

well i guess you could try jb weld. its prettystrong, and if it doesnt work you dont lose anything. good luck, Ben

[Fast68Chevy]

is nickel tough enough to take drilling and tapping and starter bolt torque/stress ?

thanks

[Mike C]

Stick it in a truck with a manual trans and use a bellhousing mount starter

[jku72]

Both my 4 speed trucks I have had had broken starter mount bolts on the bell housing. In my mind, this is not so uncommon, although I have not read about it before. Well, not the bolts broken, but the cast housing "ear". To be honest, I just left that bolt off, and on my Burb, it is still that way, it was that way when I bought it, then I changed the starter, and it is still that way.

[kaarazy]

I have seen people use drag racing scatter shields that go betwwen the block and trans. This allows you to use a starter such as spoken above for manual trans.

[mikep]

The nickel rod will hold the bolt stress. You need to make sure its really clean and preheat with a torch before welding.

[Fred T]

The nickel isn't the part of the weld you have to worry about, it's the cast steel around it that cracks. In the hands of an experienced welder it can be made to work.

[ckhd]

mike p,

Why "yuk" on helicoil?

I ask because I have used helicoil for a while. The first one was on a stripped hole for the intake on my '69's 350. The engine is now in my '68 and the helicoil is still working absolutely perfectly (installed that helicoil in about 1987).

As for JB weld, I refuse to even attempt it anymore. Pure unadulterated crap, imho.

[mikep]

Helicoils
I do industrial maintenance for a living. Hardly a day goes by that I am not fixing a stripped thread on something. Helicoils are fine for things that get assembled and stay that way and I use them quite often but if I have a choice my choice is going to be for a threaded sleeve made by EZ Sert. Say I have a stripped 3/8 coarse hole. I drill it oversize, thread it 7/16 coarse and screw in the threaded insert with a bolt or a regular screwdriver. Jobs done. No winders. No coming unwound. They can be machined once in place. Try that with a helicoil. Theyre stronger than the parent threads and since they have a microencapsulated epoxy that mixes when the threads are disturbed they lock themselves in place once tightened. Theyre also avalable in a huge variety of sizes both metric and standard from 1/8 to 1 inch ID and many with metric internal and standard external threads and with thick and thin walls depending on what you are trying to repair. Thats very important when you dont feel like buying a pile of metric taps and you are working on an import or in my case imported machinery which I do every day. I used to use helicoils all the time. Now I hardly ever do . I mean it I swear by these things.

[Mike C]

Scattershields have no provision for a bellhousing mount starter, at least the 3 or 4 I have had... Actually, they are quite useful but are not machined as precisely as your GM bellhousing most likely.

[ckhd]

mikep,

That makes sense. Most of my helicoils go in to stuff that stays put together. I've never heard of "EZ Sert", where do you get them? They sound like a good product and I'd like to try them.

[6869704X4]

Happend to a friend of mines truck. Busted a chunk out of the outboard hole. We drilled the hole deeper and cut some more threads. Used a longer bolt. The starter nose had three holes so we drilled another hole in the block matching the hole in the starter nose that wasn't used. Cut threads for that one and used three bolts. That lasted several years. He sold the truck like that.

[mikep]

Not the first time I was wrong. The name of the product is "EZ loc" not "EZ sert" and they are marketted at decent industrial supply stores and supply houses. Mcmaster Carr sells them too. Heres an example from their online catalog

http://www.mcmaster.com/param/asp/ps...10835;161=1448

[Fast68Chevy]

interesting stuff here,

no matter what though its going to require use of a welder along some point of the repair to attempt to add metal to where its been broken off, so hmmm


thanks!