[johnuthin]

So I done goofed today. I took my car, a 1996 v6 firebird, into the dealer to address the P0300 code I had been trying to hunt down for a couple days now. I talked with the tech and he showed me the car was misfiring on random cylinders with long term fuel trim at 16% (same since I had checked it a week prior). He showed me someone had broken a stud on the EGR holder thing and the gasket decided to finally start leaking on the studless side and the EGR was now leaking like crazy. The stud is broken and its impossible to attach a bolt and the EGR at the same time now. I can put my hand next to the side with the broken stud and feel the exhaust leaking out. So I took this knowledge and went home and got to work on this newfound stress-inducing task of mine.

I took my handy dandy impact rated drill bit and my super helpful ez out and got to work. Before I could even get a chance to crumple the ez out to pieces inside of the stud, lo and behold, the titanium coated drill bit snapped the heck off inside of the stud. Wonderful. So I called my dad and complained for a bit and asked him to take me to the store to buy drill bits and I got to work once again. Except this time - I am utterly at a loss as to what to do. I cant crumble the bit with a punch, I cant drill from the bottom since there isnt enough room. I cant drill through the bit.

My plan was to just drill out the stud completetely and just replace it with a nut and bolt; I do not really think tapping the stud hole will make a difference and it isnt exactly necessary to break a tap today too. Attached are pictures of the mess. You can see the drill bit in the center of the stud sitting nice and pretty. Does anyone have any suggestions as to fix this. Ive replaced a whole lotta stuff on the car in the past couple months in preparation of transferring schools (Georgia Tech woohoo!) 700 miles away. It would be a shame if I had to take my slightly less fun $200 2001 Grand shama-LAm to college instead of the oh-so-glorious automatic base model firebird.

I have brainstormed and thought about an air pencil grinder or a die grinder. Im willing to pay the 50 or so bucks for that but dont even know if it will work. I also do not have access to a welder to turn the nut nor do I have any welding experience. Also dismounting the whole EGR setup is a bad idea too since every bolt on the exhaust of this car is rusted to heck and more prone to snapping at me than my mother when shes had too many mikes hard lemonades. If anyone has any suggestions, I greatly appreciate it and thank you for reading.

 

[GaryDoug]

It looks like you could still get a pair of vice grips on the stud. If that is not true, ignore the rest. I would put some penetrating oil around the stud and let it sit overnight. Then I would used a small propane torch to heat the surrounding flange (not the stud). Then try to turn the stud with the grips. Repeat all this several times. The torch should heat the surrounding flange metal more than the stud. You could even put an ice cube on the top of the stud just before attempting to turn it.

All this assumes the stud is not welded on or permanently attached, I really am not familiar with your engine.

Sorry to keep adding to my post... but isn't the whole mount removable from the engine?

 

[johnuthin]

Thank you Gary, I have no clue if the stud is welded or not either. I tried to put some penetrating oil on it and did attempt vice grips. Im getting no turn at all. The reason I wanted to attempt the drill through method was because Im not sure if theyre even traditional "studs" or if the part that broke is actually just a piece that is entirely machined down. Also, I have never attempted a torch of any sorts on my car in fear of possibly ingiting gas or carbon deposits. Will that be a risk here at all considering that the fuel lines are located in the proximity of the EGR valve?

Sorry to keep adding to my post... but isn't the whole mount removable from the engine?

The whole mount is removable and is attached by what I think is just two bolts. However, removing it would result in even more impossible studs breaking which defeats the purpose of this endeavor. I am familiar with an EGR block off plate, however, I like to take pride in abstaining from potential engine damaging modifications such as that- especially since I would not be able to afford the tune to go with it right away. I believe the EGR block off will be my last resort if I am unable to drill the "stud" out.

 

[GaryDoug]

I would remove the mount first. It is removable. Also it appears the studs are screwed in as shown in the attached diagram.

 

[GaryDoug]

Even if you break off one or both of the mounting assembly studs, you are in no worse shape than you are now. Still can use a blockoff plate.

 

[johnuthin]

I would remove the mount first. It is removable. Also it appears the studs are screwed in as shown in the attached diagram.

Thank you again. It does appear that the studs are removable. My biggest fear is breaking nut and studs 3 and 4 in the attached diagram. Doing so would put me in a whole world of trouble- but it would give me a chance to redeem my stud drilling skills if I did mess up. Another concern is the timing of it all. I HAVE to leave on a road trip to college on January 1st. While two weeks is an awful lot of time, there is a very real possibility that I completely fail the repair process.

I think my best bet is to order the block off plates now as a last minute resort. 30 Dollars wont hurt. If I need them I will use them and drive to georgia with the car throwing every code in the book at me but if I succeed in the repairs I can always send them back or keep them for future use.

 

[JOE68]

I've had better luck removing studs with the twist style remover sockets than vise grips. from the look of the diagram i would say it is removable. the heat would help considerably

 

[johnuthin]

Success! I reattached the egr and turned the car on and it was jumping wildly from 3k to 500 rpm. So i turned it off obviously. I took a pair of vice grips and clamped them over where the egr stud used to be and tried turning the car on again. By spraying the egr with water, i couldnt detect any vacuum leaks in the engine with the vice grips acting as a nut and bolt. So I took it to an exhaust shop where they laughed at my jerryrigged vice grip shenanigans. To anyone out there in the future I really do not reccomend this but it saved me in a pinch. The guy welded a nut on and impacted it off at his hourly rate which turned out to be an hour and a half of labor for $104 dollars. The car runs really well now and I havent felt a single miss all day just from driving around town running errands. Long term fuel trims were at 16% and have calmed down now; this seems to have fixed the vacuum leaks which I assumed were just bad lower intake manifold gaskets.

 

[Jfirebird99]

coming from a 99 3.8 owner
If you have a problem with your egr with your Firebird/camaro 3.8 specifically I think you should just take the whole thing off it’ll save you so much time it’s only about 5 bolts some nuts you’ll need to take off with like a 13 mm and 8 or 9 mm use something like pb blaster to deal with the rust and the tools you’ll need will be a couple drill bits small to bigger if you have to go that route i had luck with spraying pb on the bottom of the threads once the whole things out and twisting it with some vice grips just had to deal with this disaster that was supposed to be a 5 minute process Good luck just wanted to bring something helpful

 

[Injuneer]

Before you start arbitrarily deleting emissions systems, be sure you understand the consequences:

- If you have tailpipe emissions check, most likely the vehicle will fail. EGR controls NOx emissions.

- If your emissions check plugs into the OBD-2 connector, unless you have the codes "programmed out" by someone who knows how to do it in a way that allows the "system ready" flag to set, you will have an SES light, and likely fail.

- If you have a visual emissions check, you may fail.

- In the case of EGR, you will be increasing your engine's production of the pollutant "oxides of nitrogen", (NOx). NOx is a major contributor to chemical smog, which can affect people with respiratory issues, asthma, etc.

- EGR helps reduce combustion chamber temperatures. In addition to reducing the formation of NOx, it also reduces the chances of detonation (knock), particularly when lugging the engine at low RPM.

 

[Jfirebird99]

I was talking about simply removing the egr to put on a new one not just taking it off sorry for the confusion