If the bolt/magnet is not going to do any damage where it is just get another bolt. You need magnetic tool that uses a rare earth magnet, Most of the ones i see are not and don't work very well.

 

I am not sure I understand correctly? Did the bolt and the magnet fall inside the thermostat housing and is stuck somewhere inside the engine? Or is the bolt and magnet somewhere outside the engine?

By the way the fix shown in my pics above from July of 2013 is still going strong, the truck has 197k miles now, and it has made it to Disney World twice from NY. When my friends see it and ask what it is, I tell them it's a flux capacitor (from back to the future movie).

 

Well I found this forum after I just went and tried to use a Easy out on my lower bolt. It didnt break flush and of coarse me drillpoint wasnt dead center. I locked in the easy out and it didnt spin a inch. I certainly dont have the mad skills to fab up some angle iron repair. So how close is that water jacket behind the threads? Dont want to poke into it for sure so I was very tediously drilling forward. Is it possible to possibly redrill and /or retap these threads knocking out the remaining material? Any advice would be appreciated. I will take some detailed pics to show yall what im working with tomorrow.

 

Is there enough of the bolt sticking out that you can weld a nut to it?

What engine are you playing with?

 

Does anyone know the bolt size for the 2000 durango 5.9 gen 1? Broke both off drilling them out but cant find the bolt size anywhere, even in manuals. Looks like a "21" on the heads top but pretty rusted. Thanks for any help.

 

The small V8 4.7L and no it just didnt leave enough material to risk a spot weld though its a good idea.My mechanic buddy finally came over and helped me fabricate a new mounting surface and got the old stuff out. heres Irony for u guys. About 6 months after that the day after i had my gallbladder removed some complete total scumbag stole my truck out of my apartments parking lot. so it was goodbye to old 2002 black ram 1500 "Betsy" More Irony I replaced it with a 2007 Ram 1500 that a lityle old man had taken super good care of with low miles and not a single iota of rust as it was a Tennesee vehicle. Glad karma came back because this truck is almost 17 years old and its in better shape than some 2 year old trucks.

 

I know I ran into some problems like that with not finding correct OEM hardware and found out though my truck had predominantly US sourced parts it was assembled in Canada so for whatever reason for that I had some issues with SAE and METRIC conversions in the same vehicle. Frustrating

 

Are you talking about the water neck bolts? They are either 5/16-18 or 3/8-16 if you are going to replace them make sure you get grade 8's.

 

I think thats what my mechanic buddy did but this was a longtime ago. Since then some real horrible person stole that 2002 Dodge ram 1500 that I had forever with about 8000 dollars of my tools in . What a horrible damn day. But soon after I replaced old betsy for a 2007 Dodge Ram 1500 that looked fricken brand new. Totally spotless so that was quite a blessing. Thanks for repying