Broken Lifter Spider Mounting Hole

[tayto]

It's not really about getting to the finish line in a hurry, the problem is my work schedule doesn't allow me much time to work on these things and I have to cram as much as possible into the time I do get. Most of the time when I post here I'm trying to figure out a problem I ran into earlier in the day, and I don't have it in front of me to experiment with. I genuinely do appreciate your help, and the other help I've had here from Erik, L31 and everyone else who went out of their way.

Ya i get it, sometimes you get a plan in your head how you're going to spend an afternoon and then it goes sideways. something that I still struggle with is when to take a break. just gotta take a day or week thinking about it so you can get the right plan

 

[tayto]

When I started messing around....what internet....

wasn't it called ARPANET back then???

 

[Hipster]

wasn't it called ARPANET back then???

idk, I had a bulletin board, friends that had my ip address could post a message there. like a couple lines. Then there was Web Crawler program I remember, Crawl was right, you go nowhere fast at lightning speeds. lol A simple Atari 2600 type game was a 4 day long download. etc. Fast dial-up, can't wait for that to get to my area. lol

 

[Erik the Awful]

This guy has got himself laughed off the Mopar sites for being a clown/hack.

I'm an Uncle Tony fan. I don't agree with everything he does, but he has a lot of good information and low-buck hacks. If he "got himself laughed off the Mopar sites" then it was probably because he said stuff people didn't want to hear.

I posted that video simply because he's showing that block repair isn't as precarious as some people want to make it out to be.

As to the OP's problem, I'd tap that broken hole deeper and install a piece of all-thread to mount the spider.

 

[Majoraslayer]

In the op's pic looks like it been drilled and looks like there's something still in the hole. Broken tap/extractor? Idk, but looks very much like when you drill a broken extrator, the bit jams, side loads everything, and you fracture the cast. Very much looks like what happened here, cranking down with a wrench I could see the head snapping off, not all this, Impact tool, too long bolt maybe, but never say never either. Stranger things have happened. Pics can be deceiving also.. When you got one chance left don't waste it. Even with the loctite products, they're designed around specific applications with specific parameters with proper assemblies. Not saying it wouldn't help but you're using it outside it's parameters if trying to fix a problematic assembly and there's no guarantee that comes with that. Another thing with cracks, really need to dress them out and/or drill stop them so they don't continue to propagate under a repair. Doesn't matter the substrate. Plastic, metal, fiberglass.

This comment got buried, but in response to it, nothing else has been done to that hole except threading a bolt into it. No extractor, no drilling, in fact I was tightening the bolt with just three fingers. I took the pic without having done anything else to it, because I wanted to post here before approaching it the wrong way and making it worse. The cause of the problem is that this engine was cast in 1989, never had anything threaded into that hole, and over the years between it built up carbon deposits in the threads. Where I went wrong was failing to clean those threads before putting a bolt in it. The other two holes had oil inside them, and tightening a bolt into them encountered resistance as it pushed the oil out. Apparently the carbon in that hole acted as a seal; it never really bottomed out but had more resistance than it should, so it was just building up pressure against the oil and I didn't realize it because the bolt didn't really come to a dead stop like it was bottoming out. There were no metal shavings in the valley like another post suggested (I think what was seen was likely my camera flash reflecting off the rough oil-wet casting surface), or anything like that.

If I had advice to add to prevent this from happening to the next guy, I'd recommend taking an eyedropper and sucking the oil out of those mounting holes before threading bolts in them. Chances are this is something you'd only encounter when doing a roller cam conversion, because if you already had a roller cam those bosses likely didn't fill up with oil before taking apart the engine since there would already be a spider installed there.

 

[Hipster]

This comment got buried, but in response to it, nothing else has been done to that hole except threading a bolt into it. No extractor, no drilling, in fact I was tightening the bolt with just three fingers. I took the pic without having done anything else to it, because I wanted to post here before approaching it the wrong way and making it worse. The cause of the problem is that this engine was cast in 1989, never had anything threaded into that hole, and over the years between it built up carbon deposits in the threads. Where I went wrong was failing to clean those threads before putting a bolt in it. The other two holes had oil inside them, and tightening a bolt into them encountered resistance as it pushed the oil out. Apparently the carbon in that hole acted as a seal; it never really bottomed out but had more resistance than it should, so it was just building up pressure against the oil and I didn't realize it because the bolt didn't really come to a dead stop like it was bottoming out. There were no metal shavings in the valley like another post suggested (I think what was seen was likely my camera flash reflecting off the rough oil-wet casting surface), or anything like that.

If I had advice to add to prevent this from happening to the next guy, I'd recommend taking an eyedropper and sucking the oil out of those mounting holes before threading bolts in them. Chances are this is something you'd only encounter when doing a roller cam conversion, because if you already had a roller cam those bosses likely didn't fill up with oil before taking apart the engine since there would already be a spider installed there.

ok, kinda looked to me like there was remnants of something still in there. Also looked to me like the threads that are still there are a bit deformed. At some point you have to pick your poison and run with it. Can't speak for everyone but I've been broke with broken stuff. If it's not your DD time is on your side. That lifter plate acts like a spring keeping the lifters in place, not an engineer, but not so sure it sees no stress/vibration/harmonics either as some are saying. I don't take shortcuts with valvetrain stuff. better off drilling the oil passage yada,yada, but you don't want to disassemble either.

 

[0xDEADBEEF]

This comment got buried, but in response to it, nothing else has been done to that hole except threading a bolt into it. No extractor, no drilling, in fact I was tightening the bolt with just three fingers. I took the pic without having done anything else to it, because I wanted to post here before approaching it the wrong way and making it worse. The cause of the problem is that this engine was cast in 1989, never had anything threaded into that hole, and over the years between it built up carbon deposits in the threads. Where I went wrong was failing to clean those threads before putting a bolt in it. The other two holes had oil inside them, and tightening a bolt into them encountered resistance as it pushed the oil out. Apparently the carbon in that hole acted as a seal; it never really bottomed out but had more resistance than it should, so it was just building up pressure against the oil and I didn't realize it because the bolt didn't really come to a dead stop like it was bottoming out. There were no metal shavings in the valley like another post suggested (I think what was seen was likely my camera flash reflecting off the rough oil-wet casting surface), or anything like that.

If I had advice to add to prevent this from happening to the next guy, I'd recommend taking an eyedropper and sucking the oil out of those mounting holes before threading bolts in them. Chances are this is something you'd only encounter when doing a roller cam conversion, because if you already had a roller cam those bosses likely didn't fill up with oil before taking apart the engine since there would already be a spider installed there.

Definitely hydrostatic pressure then. Blow it out with air and chase the threads next time.

 

[Hipster]

I'm an Uncle Tony fan. I don't agree with everything he does, but he has a lot of good information and low-buck hacks. If he "got himself laughed off the Mopar sites" then it was probably because he said stuff people didn't want to hear.

I posted that video simply because he's showing that block repair isn't as precarious as some people want to make it out to be.

As to the OP's problem, I'd tap that broken hole deeper and install a piece of all-thread to mount the spider.

More to it than that, several other guys there doing low buck bang for the buck, grassroots hotrodding type stuff. I watched him, it's not all bad. Some of it is amazingly like what others have posted a few weeks prior. Just won't buy stuff from him. Not long ago he employed all his hacks , helped a guy out and built an engine, for ***** and giggles the guy wanted to baseline it on a dyno just to see where it was at. So it went to another shop....and never ran right. That was on youtube and it is laughing stock material.

Have to be careful of who you idolize not all of it is legit.

 

[fancyTBI]

More to it than that, several other guys there doing low buck bang for the buck, grassroots hotrodding type stuff. I watched him, it's not all bad. Some of it is amazingly like what others have posted a few weeks prior. Just won't buy stuff from him. Not long ago he employed all his hacks , helped a guy out and built an engine, for ***** and giggles the guy wanted to baseline it on a dyno just to see where it was at. So it went to another shop....and never ran right. That was on youtube and it is laughing stock material.

Have to be careful of who you idolize not all of it is legit.

It’s all just content made to get views at the end of the day. His YT comments are full of people who love him.

My GF and I were talking about this the other day. YT comments are FULL of people worshipping these creators. It’s so ******* weird.

 

[Hipster]

It’s all just content made to get views at the end of the day. His YT comments are full of people who love him.

My GF and I were talking about this the other day. YT comments are FULL of people worshipping these creators. It’s so ******* weird.

and that cool too. But I get it , easily manipulated individuals. I watch some yt where they have live chat and people just constantly throwing donations at them. Sometimes think It's behind the scene individuals trying to basically shame others into throwing out a few bucks. Good ol' boy networking.