Well, after giving some people a hard time about this subject, we found a broken Vtec solonoid bolt on my car today. I can see the end of it in the head but it is broken off flush or slightly in the head. I may need to easyout the bolt end from the head and since there is very little clearance, it looks like a major PITA. I'll post pictures in the next post.

 

Notice the allenhead bolt on the right and the empty hole under it.



Close up


One potential solution, Titanium bolts.

 

Did your car come from the factory with allen headed bolts?

If it is broken off flush with the head, I have had good luck with wire welding a smaller bolt onto the end of the threads so that you can back them out with a wrench.

 

The OEM bolts have a 10mm head and are approx 1" shorter than the vortech supplied bolts.

I'll take a look at mine now.

 

Just checked, all bolts in place.

 

Not only did I break that bolt, I broke the one on the idler pulley, cracked the horizontal braket, damaged the vtech spacer brackets facing and cracked a piece off the timing chain cover.

 

How did you do all of that?

 

Sounds like a grenade went off in your engine bay.

 

Still trying to figure it out. The SC lost the input bearing and so it gets to be a game of which came first. Did a bolt go causing the bearing to take excess load and fail, did the bearing failure increase the load causing a bolt to go or?

 

My SC is temporarily off the car, no broken bolts or signs of iminent failure. I forget what it is, but there is a specific torque for required to hold the solenoid assy on, but it's not much. Must be the vibration, long stud length, and weight put on those bolts.