NOW What

[HARVEY LIGHT]

AS I was torqueing down the head bolts I noticed one was not getting tighter, but rather looser. Closer examination shows a crack at the block leading up to the bolt hole. What do I do now???? I just had the block bored, cleaned up and surfaced/decked. Can this be remedied by welding the crack and retapping the hole? It is the hole in the passenger side corner, and I am concerned that I will lose compression if I just let it be. Any ideas out there would be appreciated.

 

[CoupeBoy]

Not sure if it works on the sixes, but on my old ford tractor I had a similar problem, corner of the block cracked out, the previous owner used a piece of ready-rod and threaded it in down past the problem area. FYI ready-rod does not torque to 50ft/lbs very well. To fix it, I bought a heli-coil kit so I could use a bolt of the same size, drilled the hole to the size specified, tapped it, and then threaded 2 of the inserts down the hole. I rebuilt the block corner (cosmetic) with JB Weld. Then installed a head stud, making sure it had enough threads on it to reach down into a 'good' part of the block, applied loc-tite to it and reassembled the engine. It seemed to work just fine.

-ron

 

[rbohm]

Not sure if it works on the sixes, but on my old ford tractor I had a similar problem, corner of the block cracked out, the previous owner used a piece of ready-rod and threaded it in down past the problem area. FYI ready-rod does not torque to 50ft/lbs very well. To fix it, I bought a heli-coil kit so I could use a bolt of the same size, drilled the hole to the size specified, tapped it, and then threaded 2 of the inserts down the hole. I rebuilt the block corner (cosmetic) with JB Weld. Then installed a head stud, making sure it had enough threads on it to reach down into a 'good' part of the block, applied loc-tite to it and reassembled the engine. It seemed to work just fine.

-ron

a friend of mine and i did a similar thing with a studebaker block, but without the heli-coils as the threads in the block were fine. we also used the stock bolt as well, but jb welded the crack to keep it from expanding. and yes we got lucky that the threads were fine.

 

[Lazy JW]

AS I was torqueing down the head bolts I noticed one was not getting tighter, but rather looser....

Bummer. This tells that the block is actually spreading apart as the bolt is tightened. Welding would be my choice, any chance of posting a picture?
Joe

 

[Alabama65stang]

I had the headbolt hole in the block on the front on the right side strip out. This is the one that runs down into the water pump opening. It also looked like there was a crack on the outside of the block. My parts guy said I had nothing to lose by trying a helicoil. Put the helicoil in and bought the ARP head bolt stud kit. Put it all back together with the studs and it torqued down fine and has held for 2 years now.