dimanche 24 août 2014

Thermostat Bolt Broke

One of the perks of being young and working in this certain lubrication shop, I can work under and above my car with a TON of tools on hand. Asked my Manager if I could swap my broken thermostat with a new one. He saw how simple it was and was like "sure go for it bud, just close the shop when you are done" I should just drove away and went home at that point.



Well I got into taking the thermostat off which is pretty dang easy. Threw the new on from O'Reilys as they had one in stock and offered the 1year warranty for $50 bucks I said why not? Well started the car/ bled the coolant for bubbles, added additional coolant and went for a test drive to test for leaks. Sure enough, it was gushing out underneath the thermo after pressure built up.



I thought hey no problem I probably just didnt torque the bolts down enough as I know they only need a simple 8ft/pounds. Well I have a chronic over-torquing issue. I tightened the bolts down more and took enother test drive and it was just gushing still. Well I am like shoot this musta been a bad thermostat as the gasket was sorta ripped and the electrical connector was sketchy. I was in a hurry and I was very tired it was already 7PM and spent almost 2 hours figuring out what I could do. I finally decided to just throw the old thermostat back on.



Then the fun happens. I undo all the bolts when I got to the last one, the upper left housing bolt. I heard a crack. and the bolt fell out. :tsk:



I took out the thermostat and now it has about 2 or 3 threads hanging out. I took a pair of needlenose vice grips and well as other vice grips. Could not get a good grip and was just tearing up the bolt. I put the old thermostat on, topped up/ bled the coolant. I carefully drove 20 minutes home. Surprisingly the old thermostat was just dripping under pressure. It didnt burst on the way home and carefully watched my temp gauge and didnt stomp on the gas ( im a heavy driver).



Sooooooo anyways I kno the idea of extracting the bolt but have no tools like that at my disposal and dont wanna buy an extracting kit. I plan to have a shop do it. At my local indy shop there Is a bmw mechanic there that owns a e46 and basically rebuilt the whole thing. Thought about giving him a call.



I am wondering how much it would cost them. It is the top bolt so they do have room to work with. I just dont want them to dope around saying it took them an hour to take off the old thermostat when I can do it in 5 minutes.



I thought Id post here to see if you guys had any input or advice! Thanks!



:help:







New thermostat













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