broken off Harley header bolt advice sought NGC

[bigbikerrick]

Hello folks, this is on an 09 XR 1200 sportster my son recently purchased. after a ride yesterday we noticed the front header was loose. It turns out the previous owner attempted a botched up repair that didnt hold. It seems a piece of the  broken stud was left deep in the bottom of the threaded hole, and a heli coil was inserted on top of the broken stud piece, the heli coil is only about 3/8 " of thread  you can tell he tried to drill it out unsuccesfully. It is the upper stud on the front cylinder.  What do you folks recommend? head removal and send  the head to a  machine shop? Anyone know of a machine shop in the Tucson or Phoenix area that can handle this type of repair?
any advice given much appreciated,
Rick.

[Kiwi_Roy]

Perhaps you could use a piece of tube to act as a guide for drilling a small pilot hole thru the broken stud then an ez-out. Squirt some light oil in there in the meantime.

Can you convert the bolts to studs threaded all the way into head?

[Rich A]

Perhaps you could use a piece of tube to act as a guide for drilling a small pilot hole thru the broken stud

Try a left-hand drill bit if you do this (after soaking the thing in some penetrating oil). Sometimes the bit will catch and the broken piece will come out w/o resorting to an EZ out.

Rich A

[cruzziguzzi]

I'd just pull the head and send it to Ramjet on Cave Creek road.

They won't be cheap, might piss you off a little but I trust them.

Note that depending upon the degree of wear/miles/abuse, one may wish to have BOTH heads gone through together to assure parity.

Might not matter once you get the first one off but if is gets cleaned up significantly and the other does not, it might.


https://www.ramjetracing.com


Todd.

[Lee Davis]

I had a VW and Porsche engine remanufacturing business in 1979-1985, and we did about 2,800 engines. Naturally, I saw hundreds of broken studs, especially exhaust studs. The only way to fix a broken stud is to completely drill the remains out and install a new stud, and to do it with the head off (I did a few with the engine complete, but it was tougher). When done well, I would drill a small diameter hole (about 1/8th in., on a drill press) directly down the center of the stud, as a pilot hole. Then, drill another hole that matches the stud diameter, minus the thread width. The thread remnants are cut out with a tap, and a new stud inserted. This is actually quite easy if the pilot hole is well centered, and the remnants of the old threads come out cleanly. An EZ out should NEVER be used! Especially on exhaust studs.  The stud is invariably frozen, and the EZ out will break nearly 100 % of the time.That has the potential for ruining the head, for a broken EZ out is virtually impossible to remove. If the pilot hole doesn't go through the exact center (or very close) of the stud, then the finished and tapped hole will be off, and have a poor grab on the new stud. In that situation, a larger hole can be drilled and tapped, and a helicoil inserted. Also, an oversize stud (standard exposed end, but larger embedded end) can be used.
I became proficient at stud repair, and it was very routine. The local VW dealer would even send me their heads for repair.  So, I think that the only remedy is to bite the bullet... pull the head, make some machine shop inquiries and do it right. My guess is that the remains of the stud and helicoil can be removed, and a new helicoil inserted. The most common mistake is to try to drill out a stud with a full sized bit, to begin with. Without a pilot hole, the large bit will almost certainly wander and skew off to one side as it hits the softer material of the head on one side. The pilot hole is essential, and guarantees the large bit will not wander.

[Kiwi_Roy]

Great advice right there


Sent from my shoe phone!

[Lee Davis]

A month or so ago, I did a dumb thing on my new V9... I installed new shocks and overdid the tightening of the lower bolt and busted it off. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Those bolts are rather small, a little under 3/16 diameter (I don't know the metric size), and so drilling a pilot hole is very touchy, especially since the bolts are hardened. So, I had a tiny bit of the broken bolt exposed, and had to remove it. I drilled a hole in the end of a 2" length of narrow steel and laid it over the stud head (which had about 1mm of stud exposed). Then I touched the mig welder to that stud top, welding it to the strip of metal. When cool, I turned it out and removed the busted bolt. Now, if this had been a frozen exhaust stud, it would not have worked... but since it was just a normal bolt, it came out easily. I was feeling fairly stupid, fancying myself to be a wizard on these matters. But it saved the day, and my pride.

[Sheepdog]

Thanks for the tips, Lee. We have a bunch of machines here on the farm...there is no doubt that I'll use your techniques at one time or another.

[bigbikerrick]

Thanks for the advice /suggestions. I am deffinitely going to have to pull the head. I was going to try and drill/use an ez out, etc. but Lee Davis has convinced me to not dick around with this thing. if it had just broken off, and no one had messed with it in the past, I would give it a shot, but since it has been drilled, the hole wallered out some at the entrance, I think I had better let a pro deal with it.
It looks to me like they are going to have to tig weld into the head to have enough material to work with.
Thanks again,
Rick.

[Lee Davis]

Jeez, thinking about all this has brought back a flood of memories. There are many ways to salvage the situation, even after someone else has screwed up and left you with a clunker. On VW engines, and even some early Porsche 356 and 912 engines, one of the recurrent problems was the long cylinder studs pulling from the softer magnesium alloy of the engine cases (8 studs on a side). Many times I remember someone driving up to the shop, and from 50 yards away I could diagnose their problem just from the sound. The blast of a loose cylinder head has a very distinctive sound. To do a jiffy fix, they made a stud that could be slipped in the hole of a removed stud... it had a larger self tapping threaded tap head. It was a lousy way to fix it, but I saw many owners and shops try it anyway. What we did on virtually every case (from 40HP up through about 1971) was to remove all the studs and tap the cases for what were called "case savers", which I bought by the thousands. The case saver was a sleeve, essentially, threaded on the inside to match the original stud, and threaded a larger size on the outside. Somewhat like a giant solid helicoil. Solved the problem. VW eventually began installing these case stud inserts themselves, in the dual port engines of 1972, on. I even used case savers sometimes for exhaust stud holes that were badly wallowed out, with a helicoil inside the saver to reduce the hole to the correct diameter. 
    But something that you should consider when you have the head off is to check the seating of the valves (This is a wonderful opportunity to do this!). Since the valves will be firmly closed, take some gasoline and pour it in the ports along the shafts of the valves. Hold it up and look at the valve faces and see if there is any gas leaking through... there should be none at all. If there is, you have the opportunity to do a quick, free of charge 'valve job'. If there is gas leaking past the valve/seat, remove the valve spring (can be done with two people and a magnet pen to grab the keepers, or with a valve spring compressor from the auto parts store), then get a tube of lapping compound at the auto parts store. They also make a cheap suction cup hand lapper that is easy to use. Apply the compound to the valve surface where it meets the seat and 'lap' it back and forth with turns of the lapping tool. Wipe excess off cleanly, after maybe 50 spins of the tool. Reassemble and do the gas check. You will be surprised at the result. When an engine sits for a period, some of the valves are naturally open, and deterioration is inevitable. This works so well that I think if I had one head off and discovered leaks, I would pull the other and fix it too.  When I was in the Cape Verde Islands on my sailboat in 1992, I pulled the head off the 4 cylinder Perkins diesel engine and lapped the valves. It had sat in London for 6 months and I just knew that there would be blow by past the valves. During the 'gas test', it just gushed past the first valve I checked... nuff said.  Didn't cost anything, well, except the spare head gasket and 10 cents worth of lapping compound.  Oh... I have posted this picture before, but, talking about the sailboat, I just have to post it again. This is a shot of my daughter at 10 months, about 4 months after the Cape Verdes. She is now a 1st Lieutenant in Alaska (Airborne!).

[rodekyll]

Lee's in his element here, I think.

I was always the new kid at every shop I started working for.  I spent a lot of time fitting that drill jig to the sides of VW cases and doing the case savers.  Tedious.  Getting the inserts square and plumb is an art!   And align bores.  and thrust cuts.  And head fly cuts.  But stud work was the worst.  I made it a point to suck at it I think, because after endless practice, I got really good at sucking at it.

[Kev m]

The biggest problem with used Harleys are the many ham-fisted Harley owners.

That said I believe the guys at the XLforum have mentioned a jig for doing this on the bike sometimes (depending on the particular stud location).

Of course if it's already been buggered pulling is really the only right answer anymore.