Exhaust stud repair., WTF???????? Options

[BiG bOgGs]

This weekend I am doing a replacement of the push rod tube seals, my first valve adjustment, a repair of the pulled exhaust stud on the driver side, and a permanent plugging of the air injection holes with a couple bolts and a little JB weld.

This morning I put the teener up on some ramps and crawled under her to remove the exhaust from the heads so that I could re-tap the one loose stud and replace the gaskets with a set I got from the good Dr. in Atlanta. When I got under there, I saw two allen bolts in place of the nuts and studs I was expecting. And when I unscrewed them from the head I pulled out the timecerts that they were inserted with. plus, there was no copper gasket. Here is what I have now.





I will now have to cut the bolts in order to get them off of the exhaust, and as you can see in the one pic, they had to split the sides of the exhaust just to fit the bigger bolts. I was able to tap the head with a M12X1.5 tap, so I believe I will be able to put some threaded inserts in there along with some new studs, and the one stud I was doing this whole procedure for in the first place looks like it will be able to be re-tapped for the 8/9 studs I have on hand, but I might have to go to a 8/10.

At least it is a beautiful sunny day here in SW FL.

Any suggestions as to things I might consider as I get ready to put this bit of Porsche happiness back together?

Jim

[Bruce Hinds]

Very Very Important!!! is to not only use the copper gaskets, but the copper Nuts too. the problem with steel nuts or bolts is that they will expand too much and pull right out of the head like the allens you're taking out.

So regardless of what studs you use, make sure you can get the copper nuts....

B

[Cap'n Krusty]

Very Very Important!!! is to not only use the copper gaskets, but the copper Nuts too. the problem with steel nuts or bolts is that they will expand too much and pull right out of the head like the allens you're taking out.

So regardless of what studs you use, make sure you can get the copper nuts....

B

This has become tiresome. How many times do we need to go through this? There ARE NO "copper" exhaust nuts. They're copper plated steel, and they cause problems of their own because they "lock". The factories (both VW and Porsche) used standard non-locking exhaust nuts, albeit with a Helicoil in the nut. No locking component whatsoever. Furthermore, to put it bluntly, your expansion theory is unsupportable hogwash.

In this particular case, the REAL way to fix the problem is gonna be to remove the head(s), repair the bosses by welding (as well as the almost certain cracks in the exhaust ports), and redrill the holes. BTDT, more times than I care to remember. 12mm is far too large for the amount of supporting material in the boss.

The Cap'n