Tired and frustrated with the glycol in oil leak..

[Excaliber]

I don't know Olddog, in this case he has potentially a lot of thread left at the bottom of the hole, adding the studs and using all the existing thread should do the trick. Of course I'd repair the hole in question and inspect the others.

My concern with something as important as the block would be to do as little as possible to preserve what I got. There is always the potential for things to get ugly if you heli coil enough of those holes, binding, drilling off just a bit, helicoil sticks and won't thread correctly into the new hole. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I've had a couple of heli coil installation jobs that took a left turn and ended up being a real nightmare. Less is better in my book, which is why I would probably try a chemical fix myself as the first step. Thats a hard call though, yeah, I might go helicoil first time in this case (for ONE hole).

[wetdog]

I have been following your problem and I have to say that you were tenacious enough to keep at it ..sorry you missed some summer driving time but it has to feel great to finally know what caused your milkshake!
During my build I had a few bumps and after I figured them out it was the biggest relief ...mostly my wallet , hang in there and thanks for taking the time to post and take pics WD

[olddog]

Originally Posted by Excaliber

There is always the potential for things to get ugly if you heli coil enough of those holes, binding, drilling off just a bit, helicoil sticks and won't thread correctly into the new hole. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I've had a couple of heli coil installation jobs that took a left turn and ended up being a real nightmare. Less is better in my book, which is why I would probably try a chemical fix myself as the first step. Thats a hard call though, yeah, I might go helicoil first time in this case (for ONE hole).

I have done a few over the years. I usually have more issues with cutting good clean threads than anything else. Especially aluminum. It cuts so easy your tempted to turn too far before turning backward to cut the threads off. I do know that heli-coils need very good threads.

[cdnus]

Maybe the resident aluminum expert could offer some helpful advice at this point ??

Are you there David?

Craig