Real Fiero Tech

today I attempted to remove the upper half of the intake manifold. I succeeded but one of the bolts broke into the lower half. There was a lot of corrosion where the bolts threaded into.

So I drilled a hole through the broken bolt and tried to use an easy out. Who ever invented them was a piece of crap because it broke into the bolt. I tried to drill a hole again but no bit seems to cute easy out.

How should I go about doing this? I'll probably;y end up helicoiling the hole but I need to get everything out first.

If you have access to a mill, take the lower intake off (I hope you covered the port openings while you were drilling!) clamp it to the mill table and very carefully run a plunging mill cutter through the bolt.

If you have a few days, keep it soaking in penetrating oil.
If you can still grab any part of the bolt, you might try gently heating the manfiold until the bolt comes loose. Be careful, aluminum doesn't glow before it melts.
Also, once you heat the bolt/manifold up to a 150 degrees or so, you can melt parafin wax on it and the wax will wick into the threads like penetrating oil and help the thing come out.

whoever invented easy outs was the man, it was the chinesses that made the one you snapped. Poor quality easy outs are worthless, expensive ones are worth every penny.

Drilling out the easy out will not happen, its hardeded steel. You can probably get a new (used) intake in a few days from someplace like www.kickhill.com

You can drill out a cheap easy out... it snapped because it was NOT heat treated correctly.

Step 1) Remove manifold
Step 2) Send to machine shop for EDM
Step 3) Pay $50
Step 4) Reinstall manifold, this time using lots of antiseize on everything as the paranoia starts to set in

I always use anti-seize any time steel and aluminum meet and can be exposed to weather.

That's a bad idea. Anti-sieze will just help your bolts back out on their own. Use loctite instead. It will prevent siezing AND stop your bolts from rattling loose. There are too many bolts on a Fiero that are notorious for rattling out.. 88 caliper bolts anyone?

After just barely being able to get my lateral link outer pivot bolts out, I anti-seized them and reassembled with old nuts. It took about 5,000 miles for them to need tightening again.

I probably need to check the torque on the rear caliper bolts.

If you go to rod-end links in the rear suspension, you can tighten the bolt with weight off the suspension (MUCH easier) and you could use high strength threaded rod and be able to reef down to 150 ftlbs or so. That ought to keep it tight, anti-seize or not.

I've never had a problem with non-suspension bolts (like cradle or engine mount bolts) coming loose after being anti-seized. The cyclic loading from the suspension is what does it. Everything else is safe.

Thanks for the help guys!

I ended up taking the lower intake off like whipped said and drilling out the original bolt from below. This gave me access to the broken easy out so I can PUNCH-IT-OUT! I was able to save most of the threads. Too bad GM didn't think harder on the steel to aluminum thing. :scratch: