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Newbie here. My 19yo son is rebuilding his 2003 Civic EX 1.7l with a new head gasket. In taking it off, he accidentally stripped out some of the upper threads of what appears to be just an oil plug bolt on the rocker guide(? not sure if that is what it is called). I have searched the forum and found an image of the plug hole. I didn't want to necro bump a 10yo thread, so it is listed below. In it the blue circled hole is what has been stripped on the upper half of the threads. The plug bolt will fit back in, but the threads don't start to catch until about halfway down.
Do we need to re-tap the hole and get a larger bolt? Or would putting the older bolt back in with some thread locker on it to keep it in place work? We aren't sure what it really does or how much pressure it might be under when running.
Any help is appreciated as he is really frustrated with this. We have searched the web for weeks looking for a diagram to show what the bolt is even for and just came across this picture today. Again, any help is appreciated.
Tossing the picture here so ppl don't have to flip back and forth between threads
Just curious, how many threads still engage properly? I guess what I'm really asking, how many turns on that bolt do you get before either the bolt bottoms out or the flange of the bolt meets that bearing cap?
Tossing the picture here so ppl don't have to flip back and forth between threads
Just curious, how many threads still engage properly? I guess what I'm really asking, how many turns on that bolt do you get before either the bolt bottoms out or the flange of the bolt meets that bearing cap?
Thanks for moving the picture. I wasn't sure how to do that, but it seeing it is way easier than trying to describe it accurately. We haven't tried to put it back in b/c we are afraid of stripping out the remaining threads. I will try it this afternoon and see if it goes in without too much trouble.
I tried the original bolt (1.2cm long) and get 3 full turns before it is fully inserted. I bought a larger bolt (2.5cm long) and it bottoms out with 1.5cm in the hole and 1com sticking out.
Both felt pretty secure. I am thinking that with some red permanent thread locker that the longer one will hold. I assume that it would need to be cut off to the length of the original to fit the head of the bolt all the way down to the surface.
It seems like if it doesn't work, it's just a fairly easy job to take the valve cover back off and then retap the hole for a bit larger bolt. Or should I just go ahead and retap it now? I have never done that before, though it seems pretty straightforward.
