Urgent question - stripped oil pickup bolt Options

[AndrewBlyholder]

Dropped the motor on my street car for hell hole rust repairs. As long as I had the motor out, thought I'd fix a few oil leaks, which I thought were mostly old push rod tube seals having given out. Just discovered the bolt that holds the oil pickup tube is stripped. That will definitely be a leaker too. The real fix for this is to of course split the case and heli-coil the stripped threads. Really didn't want to go there. Does anyone have any suggestions for a fix for this that DOESN'T include splitting the case?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Andrew B.

[AndrewBlyholder]

Thanks for the suggestions.

Tried a longer bolt but it wasn't feeling like it was going to hold any torque. Decided to bite the bullet and do a full disassembly. Heli-colied the stripped threads and it's in the process of going back together. In hindsight, the disassembly and reassembly process isn't what takes time, it's all the parts cleaning!! If it had a been a clean motor to start with, then it might not have been so bad, but this was my street car motor, which had been leaking oil for many years. Last time I had it out of the car for clean up and oil leak repairs was 20 years ago. Not wanting to reassemble rusty parts, I've also been sand blasting and repaint the engine tin, intake manifold tubes, and all the various sensors and brackets. That has also been a time consuming process. So a word to the wise: rebuilding a functioning motor is pretty quick and easy, rebuilding a nice looking motor takes a LOT more time! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

Andrew