It appears that the previous butcher to own my car must’ve somehow stripped the knuckle where the bolt goes for the brake caliper… so he must’ve drilled and then retapped it because it has threads in it. Do they sell an oversize bolt kit for G-body’s? I obv can’t heli-coil it because the bolt hole goes all the way through there is nothing to bottom out the heli-coil. I’m stumped and too pissed off to be able to give it any real thought.
Any ideas??
ohhhh yea…before anyone says it, I can’t just replace the knuckle because this one is chrome.
You can helicoil it. Helicoils are not meant to bottom out. You must recess the last coil below the flush surface and break the tab, so the recessed hole must allow further depth than the helicoil needs.
Adam’s right. You can through-thread a heli-coil as long as you have clearance on the back end. Just make sure the torque specs match up – the coil application vs. the manufacturer’s torque spec on the bolt itself.
This probably goes without saying, but use new bolts too. Assuming the old bolt wasn’t totally wrecked anyway, once a bolt is over torqued it’s been pushed past its yield point and is no longer elastic, so its strength has been compromised.
Well the idea was to enlarge the current hole, fit a piece of steel in and weld it, then drill into the new piece without drilling the weld. It was just an idea, I don’t know of anybody that has done it before.