New ranger dad here...

[JohnPsz]

My, now 15 years old, son bought a '97 ranger with his lawn mowing/birthday money last fall when he was 14. The previous owner was attempting to do a head gasket on his own and ended up stripping a few bolts and gave up on it with it half torn apart, so my son got it for pretty cheap. We fixed it up and did the head gasket, and when we got it back up and running we spent some time troubleshooting a misfire. We ended up tearing it back down and found a crack in the head and ordered a new head. Once we installed the new head and got it up and running we had an oil leak from the front of the head, we replaced the cam seal assuming that might have been a bad seal. Later we found the it was leaking from the oil galley plug and we had to pull the timing and tensioner off again, but this time the stud that holds the tensioner spring broke. We spend a while on Facebook looking for details on that and were directed to this site for more info.

Now we are new here...

 

[franklin2]

I guess this is the 2.3 4 cyl? Which bolt broke? Can you get to it easily?

 

[dvdswan]

Welcome to the site.

 

[JohnPsz]

I guess this is the 2.3 4 cyl? Which bolt broke? Can you get to it easily?

Yes, It's a 2 3 4cyl, I should have mentioned that. As for the bolt/stud he broke, It's the one that is still installed on. The head in that diagram, lol. The stud that the tensspring pushes against. I found this pic online and added an arrow to it.

 

[Brain75]

Little advice...

If you ever overheat them bad, the head bolts will all break off when you try to remove em (I found that out on an 89 mercury car, then heard it repeatedly from others in the classic world).... Since the PO broke bolts and now you are breaking bolts, I would tend to assume that engine got smoked. If it is in the budget now, might look for a good junkyard donor and just start over with a cleaner motor rather than fight/baby one around for forever constantly fixing it - probably cheaper in the long run. Be very wary of your junkyard motors as you could end up with one even worse, shop wisely...

 

[superj]

Welcome to the group!!

 

[franklin2]

Yes, It's a 2 3 4cyl, I should have mentioned that. As for the bolt/stud he broke, It's the one that is still installed on. The head in that diagram, lol. The stud that the tensspring pushes against. I found this pic online and added an arrow to it.

Ok, so you have room to work. Getting broken bolts out is a little bit of a art. You just have to be accurate and careful.

You have to assume the worst when starting out, and that the bolt is froze solid in the engine. The best scenario is it just fatigued and broke, and is just sitting in the engine.

So to start you need a good center punch. You need to carefully lay the center punch as close as you can to the center and make a mark in the middle of the broken bolt. Get back and stare at it, if it's not in the center try again. You can put the punch right beside a previous punch mark and punch it, or angle the punch a little to push the metal over if you are half a punch mark off. it's very important to start in the middle of the broken bolt.

Then get a small drill bit. 1/8 is about right. Start drilling, you must be careful here too and keep it in the middle. This drill bit is small, so when you start out if you need to steer it a little bit to keep it in the middle you can. Until it starts getting deeper and then of course you might break it off. But this is going to be your guide hole, try to keep it in the middle.

Then get what they call "easy outs". They come in a set. If your 1/8 hole looks really good, you can open it up a little bit so one of the larger easy outs will bite, and try to back it out. If the stud is just laying in the block, it should come right out.

If it's really stuck, this is what you planned on from the beginning, you will have to open the hole up like you were going to tap the threads, because you are going to tap the threads. This is why being in the center is so important. Of course you will need to figure out what thread it was, I think this little engine was always metric but make sure.

If you ended up being a hair off center, it doesn't usually matter too much. If it gets really ugly you can use a stud and jb weld it in place with what threads are left.