Coolant Pipe Bolt Hole Stripped! 850 Topic is solved

[Dmck]

Holy moly what a maybe solved mess.

So I went and got 3 coolant pipe gaskets and stacked them up and I believe it is sealed. But wait for it...

I have just discovered that I have a cam cover leak behind my timing belt that was running down exactly onto the coolant pipe.

Its quite possible that I originally stripped the coolant pipe bolt from frustration tightening it when originally it was oil dripping off of it and not coolant! But then I created a coolant leak by going crazy tight on it and stripping it!

I think I have the coolant leak fixed because the drip stops after the car stops and usually coolant leaked continue. I don't really have an idea if I ever even needed 3 gaskets... it's even possible this problem was fixed after tapping it.

This is not 100% the case, but now I have another problem to fix to see if all problems are now fixed.

And I was using water before my head gasket job so the engine would turn the coolant rusty colored.. that's how I could confuse oil and water originally..

[Dmck]

So it looks like my problem is fixed.

Thanks for all the help!

[SuperHerman]

Great to hear. Live and learn - mistakes are ones greatest teacher. Glad it worked out for you - plus I learned some new things about tapping correctly.

[loosenut]

take the bolt. hold the head of it with a vise grip. this works best on a vise where the vise is flat.
hold the bolt threads over the flat part of the vise, or any flat metal surface will do, not get a hammer and smash the threads flat turn the bolt over and smash them again so now your bolt is a bit oval to flat ish. now this wider bolt will cut deeper threads into the bolt hole.
AT THIS POINT USE THE TORQUE SPEC FOR THAT BOLT. this has worked for me plenty of times on my car and dare i say customers cars as well.