Exhaust help please!!!

[retrohwam]

2001 - 3.8 non turbo

Need some advice - Finally had a little time and thought I would do a much needed throttle body cleaning - I couldn't get the the TB bracket without removing the exhaust cross over - front nuts came off no problem - back nuts on shield no problem - snapped the bolts off the back - big problem.

Here's my question - these appear to be threaded from the bottom side also - how the heck am I going to get these out??

Please help

Thanks Duane

I'm going to try to attach a photo

[retrohwam]

Couldn't get to it with a grinder so I cut the extending bolts off with a dremel.
Tried to drill the bottom bolt - got off center - can not get the bolt to come out with an extraction tool - even when on a 1/2 drill (reversed).

I'm afraid if I try to make the hole larger I'll bugger up the side closest to the hole. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Duane

[BNaylor]

Wow! What a predicament to get in to.

You know you could have removed the throttle body without messing with the bracket bolt on the lower intake manifold and removing the complete bracket. After removing the left side throttle body bolt the bracket can be bent to the left just enough using a flat blade screwdriver to remove the throttle body.

In a worse case scenario you may have to remove the downpipe connection and then the rear bank exhaust manifold.

[retrohwam]

After I removed the cross over piece I realized that it probably wasn't necessary. I was in a hurry to get started - wish I would have posed the question before starting.
Thanks
Duane