Broken Lower Unit Bolts

[ACapri]

Hey guys, the water pump in my suzuki outboard needs to be replaced. Sadly the bolts that hold on the lower unit have snapped and are now stuck inside. There is no room to drill them out, any suggestions on how to tackle this problem?

[saltwaterlakey]

Drill it out and use a puncg gripvto get bolt out. Just did it on my engine blick.

[ACapri]

theres no room in any direction to get a drill in there properly

[sawingknots]

i'm not sure if this would work on aluminum or cast aluminum but it works well on steel or cast iron,take it to a welder who has a heliarc and weld a nut onto the broken bolt [if its atleast flush or protuding]make sure to ground to the nut not the housing,the heat from the welding plus something to put a wrench on usually does the trick

[ACapri]

the bolt isn't flush, it broke off inside the unit

[mdbee]

picture would help

[dabnis]

Assuming they are the bolts holding the lower unit sections together, you could loosen/break the others off, separate the housings and then possibly drill out to easy-out size, soak in penetrating oil and try to get them out. Last ditch, drill out and re-tap to replacement bolt size and thread pitch. Difficult to get the drill bit perfectly centered so you might have to slightly enlarge the opposing hole.

Dabnis

[Ulladh]

Try using left hand drill bit, smaller than bolt dia, the act of drilling may free the bolt.

Irwin Left Handed Drill Bits & Screw Extractors

[LakeSuperiorGeezer]

Get the other bolts undone, even if these are also broken off in the process. You have to get a drill to the broken bolt. I have had bad luck with the Easy-out. These are made of hardened steel and if broken off by being too agressive, are impossible to get out, cannot be drilled into. You have to buy a new casting at that point. I have seen nice results with the left hand drill. Just drilling through the center of a bolt seems to release some of the holding power, maybe the bolt shrinks a little and the bolt spins right out when you are two thirds the way through. However; what I usually do is use a small drill, say about one quarter the diameter of the bolt, use a prickk (drop one of the k, the censor for postings didn't like the word with one k) punch to make a point directly in the middle of the bolt, and drill down through the length of the broken off bolt being very carefull to stay in the center. I then use a larger drill that is the diameter of the bottom of the threads and drill using the smaller hole as a pilot to keep the larger dill centered. A pick then can be used to scrape out the remainder of the bolt thread. If you muff the procedure, you can drill it out to an even larger hole, use a special tap for a Heli-coil, and have threads stronger than the original. If all of this sounds a bit much, take it to an automotive machine shop and have them do it. It's something they do all the time and get very good at it.

[ACapri]

Thanks for all the suggestions guys, I ended up taking it to a local machine shop. I Just got it back together