I went to the woods to camp and hike for a week, but I’m back now and back to trying to fix my bolt situation on the truck. However I might have made things even worse.
I’d drilled out a 1/4" hole, which my bolt extractor said was big enough to use it in. I hammered it in, attached the handle thingy, and torqued it as hard as I could. Nuthin’
Today I went to the store and got two slightly bigger carbide bits, and widened the hole even more, hoping that the thinner the remaining parts of the bolt got, the easier it would come out. Still nuthin’.
So here I am.’
As you might be able to tell from the pics, I think I have drilled past the bolt on one side and into the thermostat housing (is that part of the engine block itself?). The part that remains still won’t come out easily. I tried hitting it a few times with a 3/8" chisel, but that’s too wide so I couldn’t get a good angle on it.
Is my best plan at this point to just keep making bigger holes until the bolt is all the way gone, then tap new threads in the thermostat housing? Or is there another option?