The second task I attacked on my pals 928 was to replace it`s water pump. Not as straight forward as initially thought given the number of bolts that broke despite my coaxing.
Broken 2mm set screws into a very expensive alloy block was a scary proposition..? Fortunately I had both a mig welder and gas torch. That the fixings were set screws, thus threaded along their length, fortunately the exposed sections were in some cases JUST long enough to be cleaned up with a wire brush to allow me to screw on a 6mm nut to each and then dab a spot of weld to fix the nut to the broken section of the screws.
With the first stage completed what was the chances of some WD 40 judiciously applied doing the trick....NONE.. sigh! I used a 10mm spanner and applied no more force to it than I thought a 6mm set screw could handle but had no luck whatsoever, knowing if they broke again I would have nothing left to work with... ouch!
The only option seemed to be to apply a bit of heat and knowing alloy does not glow red but just melts in an instant without warning, the consequences of that happening and scrapping a 928 block were scary indeed.
With much trepidation I applied the torches flame to the area of allow holding the first screw, and with the spanner on the welded on nut I applied as much "reasonable" force as one would to that size of nut while at the same time applying the flame off and on very gingerly until the screw started to move at which point I removed the flame then the screw would again refuse to move, requiring a bit more heat to be applied. I took a very long time to get all the broken screws out using this very risky laborious process ...phew.
While replacing the water pump and logically the timing belt too I spun the idler gear that tensions the belt and it sounded rough indeed, thus it too was replaced and I guess should be replaced each time a timing belt is replaced just in case...?
There will no doubt be better ways of achieving the same task, and if you know of them I would be interested to know..
Broken 2mm set screws into a very expensive alloy block was a scary proposition..? Fortunately I had both a mig welder and gas torch. That the fixings were set screws, thus threaded along their length, fortunately the exposed sections were in some cases JUST long enough to be cleaned up with a wire brush to allow me to screw on a 6mm nut to each and then dab a spot of weld to fix the nut to the broken section of the screws.
With the first stage completed what was the chances of some WD 40 judiciously applied doing the trick....NONE.. sigh! I used a 10mm spanner and applied no more force to it than I thought a 6mm set screw could handle but had no luck whatsoever, knowing if they broke again I would have nothing left to work with... ouch!
The only option seemed to be to apply a bit of heat and knowing alloy does not glow red but just melts in an instant without warning, the consequences of that happening and scrapping a 928 block were scary indeed.
With much trepidation I applied the torches flame to the area of allow holding the first screw, and with the spanner on the welded on nut I applied as much "reasonable" force as one would to that size of nut while at the same time applying the flame off and on very gingerly until the screw started to move at which point I removed the flame then the screw would again refuse to move, requiring a bit more heat to be applied. I took a very long time to get all the broken screws out using this very risky laborious process ...phew.
While replacing the water pump and logically the timing belt too I spun the idler gear that tensions the belt and it sounded rough indeed, thus it too was replaced and I guess should be replaced each time a timing belt is replaced just in case...?
There will no doubt be better ways of achieving the same task, and if you know of them I would be interested to know..
