Sup folks, got a question. My friend's thermostat needs to be replaced on her 3000gt. The bolts were so rusted that they broke off inside thermostat and the block. Anybody know how to drill them out or know how to get them out? Or can you recommend someone to go to?

 

You need bolt extractors - size depends on the size of the bolts you broke.



This is delicate work that can be frustrating. Soak them good with deep creep, or any good penetrating lubricant (I never say the word lube in forums.) before you try to extract.

There are good videos on youtube that show you how to do it.

If you can drive it any shop should be able to fix. I'd go to world imports.

 

What he said^^^^^!

 

Any update on this? Curious to see what happened. I've watched Josh do this before and in pretty sure his head exploded lol...

I know I don't have the patience for it.

 

No updates yet. I"m going to have her read this and try it. Good to know Josh got frustrated with it seeing as though he's a gear head. Shows we aren't stupid lol.

 

Yea, broken, rusted bolts are almost impossible....

 

Make sure she spends some money on the bolt extractors, the harbor freight ones are absolute trash. I snapped 4 of those in one day when drilling out some headless bolts recently. And make sure she uses a center punch first so the drill goes in as straight as possible.

And I rarely recommend this, especially because it's the block, but blow torching the area around the thermostat will expand it so it will come out easier, but you can't get the bolt too hot or it will expand to match. This is more of a last resort thing for obvious reasons.

 

Use a bottle of that penetration oil over the course of a day then do the actual extraction the next day. Let that stuff soak in.

 

yep she snapped a couple of them also lol. we drilled the thermostat out enough to get it off the bolts. that left enough of the bolt sticking out to just twist them out of the block with pliers. Success.

 

Yay!! Good to hear! It could've been so much worse.