Pictured: a sheared bolt. Story below.
Because I accidentally drained out some engine coolant when I took the old knock sensor off my truck, I decided to go ahead and flush it all out anyways since I don’t know when the previous owner last did it.
To that end, I pulled the thermostat covering off to remove the thermostat so the flush will go through the whole block. However when I put the driver side bolt back in, I discovered that I had cross threaded it 🤦🏻♂️
After trying in vain a few times to get it to go back in the right way, I have the brilliant idea to just try to torque it down anyways. Yeah.
I get it pretty close to all the way down in there, then start the engine up. Sure enough, there’s a small coolant leak from the thermostat. Nuts.
“Well,” I think “now I get to learn how to tap new threads.” I decide to back the bolt out to use as a reference for the tap to get... and it shears in two halfway through removal.
So, now I get to not only learn about tapping new threads, but also drilling out sheared bolts! Only problem is that my only drill sucks so I don’t know if it’ll be up to the task. Is this something you can do with a hand tool like you do when tapping threads? Or does it really require a good, very torquey drill?