Is there any way to take the thermostat housing bolts off without snapping the heads? The two long ones seem inevitable. Can you tell that I tried taking mine out and it broke??

I am going to leave the other long one alone for now and see if the one I broke leaks. However, someday when I need to replace the thermostat this will need to be addressed. How do I get that bolt out now? The other long one will surely break too so I will have to do them both.

 

Pretty common problem.

Sometimes, if you have enough time, you can apply heat, work it back-n-forth, wait, repeat, repeat, etc and gradually get them out intact.

Taking the water rail off (not that big of a deal) can help. You can mount the rail in a vise making it easier to deal with plus, with the rail vertical, there is *some* hope that an aerosol penetrating oil *might* actually trickle down into the corroded area. If nothing else it's much easier drilling out the old bolts with the rail off the car.

Good luck

DD

 

That is what I figured had to be done. Probably a better winter project for the most part. I was hoping they could come out so I could replace them and put some anti-seize on the threads. A little PM that went bad.