My car died! Not sure whats up......

[goglio704]

Glad to hear this is going better. Don't forget about MSC or McMaster-Carr if you can't find bolts locally.

[LD28 Owner]

Try Tacoma Screw on 2749 NE Columbia for the fasteners and they may even have the left-hand drills. Can you rent a "not much space" drill?

[atalamark]

Well Winks has 1/4" left handed bits, and its supposed to be nice tomorrow so I'm gonna try to have at this project before I go to work.

I took my drill out and tried to see how much room there was. What I referred to earlier as the "grill" , which is the next thing bolted to the front of the car after the radiator, I un-bolted only to find that it was attatched by a metal line that went to a little cannister that sits in the front upper corner of the engine compartment. What is this, and how do I remove it? Because I lifted the whole works out with one hand and reached my drill in with the other, just to see if I had the room, and by golly I'm almost positive that if I rotate the bolt to the best position I can get at it......however it would be alot easier if I had this grill thing out of the way instead of tying it off or whatever I would have to do....I just don't know what the cannister is and weather its okay to just remove the line somehow.....I scanned through the book and didn't see anything that helped.........

thanks

Mark E Kaylor

[asavage]

Mark, that's the air-conditioning condenser. It's where the freon moves the heat when it moves heat from the passenger compartment: to the front of the engine, to allow airflow to carry the heat away. I mentioned that its presence would limit your access to the sheave bolts, a couple of posts upthread.

The cannister, if it's black and behind the driver's side headlight area, is the A/C receiver/drier, a part of the air-conditioning system that filters the freon and can accumulate some pressure in-between A/C compressor clutch cycles.

Because your A/C compressor and some of the A/C lines have been removed on your car, you can safely remove the condenser ("grille-thingy") and the receiver/drier ("little cannister"). They do not need to be re-installed.

[Dr. Jones]

If you pry with any real force, the outer ring comes off the rubber mounting and that's all she wrote: you have to have it rebuilt.

Yeah so what happens after I did that and have continued to drive the car?

[asavage]

The damped portion of the assy. is the A/C sheave. If you can live without the A/C, the engine will run; however, without the damping, harmonics will shorten the life of the crankshaft, possibly leading to a broken crank, cracks in the flexplate, etc.

Nissan FAST lists one damper part No. for all years/models of LD28 in the 910 series. In other sections, FAST lists "with A/C" and "without A/C" parts, but not the damper: they want that harmonic damping action in all installations.

[Dr. Jones]

That kinda sucks. You said nissan lists this part, do you know what they charge for it?

[asavage]

12304-V0710, US$188.

There are several outfits the rebuild dampers. I've seen prices quoted around $100, if you have both parts and they're not bent or cracked.

[atalamark]

Well folks, I've been busy and the weather has been nasty but I have managed to make a few more attempts at getting out this stripped bolt.

I got a good 1/4" left handed bit, I borrowed a good right angle drill, and I went at the sucker with the drill on reverse and the speed very low. The bolt did not come out, but I did manage to drill into the thing far enough that I'm now sure I'm past the head.

I tried various angles with my big screwdriver, trying to break the head off, but nothing!

So, next step: I bought an Easy Out. The 1/4" one fit very well in to the hole I already had drilled, I used a hammer to tap the bit in, I attatched a good pair of vice grips, and over the one handle I slipped my cheater bar.
Then before I went at it I torched the bolt for a good long time.....

I barely started to turn and what happens but the Easy Out bit breaks off in the head! Great! So now I have to drill out the tip, and I guess try again with another bit because it seems like this might actually work if I can get a good turn on the thing without moving the bit laterally......

But my goodness what a never ending project this is! One bolt to get out just to see if I have a broken belt or not!

So I guess the last straw would be to get a good sharp chisel and just break the head off.......but this scares me because then I still have to remove the threads!!!!

Well I'll update again after I give it a few more shots......maybe one day I'll get lucky.......

mark in Portland

[atalamark]

I just read online somewhere about how you if you have the top of a stuck bolt showing (which I do in this case) you can weld a washer to the top, and then weld a nut to the washer, and then just use a wrench to get the bolt out.

How about this? I mean i don't have a welder or know a darn thing about welding, but, this seems to make sense. I mean if I don't get anywhere with the Easy Outs..........

[asavage]

Broken-off EZ-out. The only thing worse than that is a broken-off drill bit.

You can't drill out either of those. You have to use an abrasive -- think Dremel and either carbide or more likely a homogeneous abrasive.

There is insufficient room to weld anything to the remains of the allen head without damaging the damper, and the damper is fast becoming unavailable, so you do not want to damage it.

The allen head bolts are hard, hard enough that attacking it with a chisel is going to be difficult -- and it's still got the broken EZ-out in it.

Personally, at this point it is pretty messed, and I'd use my Dremel and take the remains of the head off with a 2.5mm carbide bit, then use a plunge carbide bit in the Dremel to eat away around the EZ-out. This is delicate work and requires patience, esp. in a poor access situation like yours.

Once the damper is off, the bolt should back out without fuss (you will have vice-grip room, but just barely), but you have got a rotten situation and if you aren't successful getting that bolt out after the damper is off, it can get very expensive.

I've had people give up and bring stuff like that to me, and a quick fix that doesn't work (EZ-outs almost never work) can easily run into a multi-hundred dollar cleanup.

Because your long-term goal is to sell it, have you considered selling it as-is as a project? Make it someone else's problem. I never advise folks to fix a car to sell, it; rather, sell a car to avoid having to fix it. A crank pirate won't care about the mess.

[atalamark]

I have thought about selling the car as-is. Its just that to the normal buyer I think its quite a project, especially because I'd be selling it under the conditions of "if you get this bolt out, you'll PROBABLY find that the belt just needs replaced".

The only potential buyer I could see would be someone from this list who has a really good idea of what the situation is.......I've listed it cheap a couple times in Portland but with no biters, and I've had the feeling that I would probably have to PAY someone to tow it away!

So I'm not sure what to do about it....my wife and I are leaving for 2 month trip across the country and then to Europe and so I need the car gone in the next few months, and, the city is probably gonna tag it soon because it has been not moving for so long, and, really I don't want to lose too much money on this but it seems there is no way around it!

If anyone on the list here would happen to be interested, well, hit me up!

[goglio704]

I'll second what Al said, but I'd try to determine the hardness of the easy out before I gave up on drilling it. What brand were the easy outs? Did it break with a nice snap, or did it just sort of yield and twist off? An easy out should be too hard to drill, but your easy out may have been poorly heat treated. If so, it may be drillable. Test the remaining piece with a file. If a file will cut it, a drill should too.

If you find you can drill it, you need to move up to 5/16" and drill no deeper than the head. Having drilled to 1/4", you still have a 1/32" thick wall holding things together.

[moose60]

I have had success with the "weld on a nut" method. I have not successfully used either a left hand drill or more than once or twice successfully used an easy-out. You could try a mobile welder. These are guys with a truck that they have mounted a welder in the bed. The heat from the welding, plus the new bold head may let you back the sucker out.



Alternatively, If you grind away the head of the bolt and then remove the damper, it sounds like you could either vise-grip the bastard out (like Al mentioned) or, worst case then you could pursue the weld method. I have also had success after the removal of the part (thus removing the tension) and heating and vise gripping like I really mean it.

The absolute last option is towing the thing to a good machine shop and having them use an EDM (?) machine on it. This will burn out the offending metal with minimal damage to the surrounding area, or so I'm told. I was quoted $150+ for a stuck screw on an old Honda CL 175. A local welder fixed it for $10.

Good luck.

[asavage]

Don't use serious heat in that area or you'll lose the damper -- they are getting old and hard to get. If you have to, remove the socket head (by whatever means -- and remove the damper and re-evaluate. Nissan doesn't seem to have used threadlocker on them (though I put threadlocker blue on them when I reinstall), so once the tension is off (damper removed) it will probably spin out just with your thumb.

I think EDM only works with dissimilar metals? [later] Guess not.