Help - Snapped Bolts when Cleaning Throttle Body

[guitarfish]

Never catch a break, I can't. The good news is the TB is clean as a whistle, here are before & after pics:





The BAD news is when I was removing one of the electronic parts, BOTH bolts snapped. The electronic part has a metal plunger-like device that moves in and out, I believe it's called the Idle Air Control.



So, not sure what now. The bolts have an orange thread lock on them. I applied some WD-40 and let it sit. Then I applied some heat. I tried filing the studs a bit square so I can grab them - no good - it's just too tight.

Suggestions? I can see myself dropping this off at a machine shop Monday and letting them deal with it. Aggravated!

[GTP Dad]

Let the machine shop take care of it. You may make matters worse and since they have the proper tools it shouldn't take them long to remove and replace them.

[Narrowgate7]

I've had similar problems on farm equipment in the past. We solved it by drilling out the bolts with a large enough bit to get most of the bolt but not hurt the threads. Usually you can drill out enough to loosen it so that you can grab the rest with a needle nose pliers and pull it out. If you drill out too much, then you have to have something small enough to go in and clean out all of the remaining junk in the bolt holes.

If you can afford it though, I agree with GTP Dad....I would take it somewhere and let them do it.

[guitarfish]

To the machine shop it is. I tried a screw extractor, which broke off...

I know...hindsight...freakin' 20/20.

[guitarfish]

Does anyone know of the throttle body on a 3800 is the same whether it's supercharged or not?

[BNaylor]

Originally Posted by guitarfish

Does anyone know of the throttle body on a 3800 is the same whether it's supercharged or not?

Nope not the same. GTP has a bigger bore and the flange mount to supercharger versus UIM plenum is different.

[guitarfish]

Well, the good news is that my car is back together. I took the TB to a machine shop, picked it up 4 hours later. They drilled out the old bolts & threads and put in helicoils. The new bolts are a little bigger, so I had to use an open end wrench to put the idle air control back, but who cares.

Unfortunately when I reassembled, I left a vacuum hose off & started the car. It was revving like crazy so I shut it off. Reconnected the hose, started, still revving high, shut off again. Then took the throttle position sensor off, thinking I may not have lined that up properly. Put back on, started again with the throttle position sensor wire mistakenly disconnected...

Yeah, so basically the computer barfed up a hairball with all this. Once I finally got everything right, the car was running fine, but the SES light was on, so I disconnected the battery. It's been a long few days!

Tomorrow will be better I hope!