> Now Walt, you said you had success welding the head. Where did you have to > have it repaired? Is this head on a car? This wasn't the head. It was the crank case block. Just forward of the water pump on top of the block there are two plugs. The casting around the smaller one (same as the oil drain plug) got a hair line crack. This happened when the owner's brother was driving it about a mile from home. Smoke started pouring from the engine. It was obviously oil burning on the muffler, so the guy drove it home. It lost about a quart of oil. I tried soldering it with brazing rod and a torch, but the alloy just wouldn't stick. I ground off what was left of the nipple. Then the professional weldor turned that into a neat flat area. Now that I've jogged my memory, it took two trips for the weldor. The first time he didn't weld the whole crack because he couldn't see how far it went. We thought it was only the nipple that cracked, but it was also the area around it. The second time he welded all the crack and then welded a plate across the whole top of the engine. The only reason for the plate was to keep crap out of the casting voids. That was the owner's idea. This car is still running strong. Rob Grady has warned me before about drilling too deep on exhaust manifold studs. It sounds like you only drilled into a coolant passage way. If that were my problem, I would drill & tap the hole and put a set screw in the bottom with plenty of red loc-tite. I would use a set screw with an allen head if I could find one or just cut the head off of a bolt and slot the end so I could get a screwdriver on it. The only problem with this idea is that the plug you use can't be any larger than the tap for the thread repair kit. Ideally the plug should be the same size & thread, but that may be a bastard size. Yes, this is an appropriate use of the word bastard -- in this sense it means odd-ball, unusual, one-off/custom. I wouldn't trust a thread repair kit to hold back coolant. I wouldn't trust any epoxy either. Can a weldor reach the inside to repair it from the back side? Probably not. It is a very deep hole to repair from the outside especially since you have to drill & tap a new hole in the middle of it. And then the gasket surface could get messed up. How far did you have to drill to get through the block? I say put a plug in it -- you have a reputation for being good at plugging your tail pipe anyway. ;-) Walt Yahoo! Groups Sponsor <http://rd.yahoo.com/M=249982.3512844.4795476.1261774/D=egroupweb/S=170512 6215:HM/A=1524963/R=0/SIG=12o72ctft/*http://hits.411web.com/cgi-bin/autore dir?camp=556&lineid=3512844?=egroupweb&pos=HM> <http://us.adserver.yahoo.com/l?M=249982.3512844.4795476.1261774/D=egroupm ail/S=:HM/A=1524963/rand=303583242> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: DMCForum-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service <http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/> .
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