Yeah I actually saw that in a few videos the other day. Seems liquid wrench prevaled on one test and the other said there wasn't really enough of a difference on any of the brands to warrant spending more money on one than the other. I think heat and percussion help the most.

 

The rust belt has taught me two things...1. rust sucks! 2. it takes a good deal of patience to work on old vehicles due to that rust.

What works for me, is to clean the item as well as I can. Then I have a small ball peen hammer that I use to tap the fastener and housing around it and periodically spray a good dose of penetrate oil on to the general area. I give the fastener a try at turning tighter first, just a little and see if it'll move. Then if it does, I start about 1/8 turn out... spray it down, tap it some more, then tighten/loosen, more tapping... all the way out. If that doesn't work, time to grab the propane torch and warm up the housing - not the bolt - and try again.

I've had good luck with PB and Kroil, both seem to work about the same.

I always have a can of NAPA anti seize on hand, in fact there are two in my toolbox right now. I clean all my fasteners and paint them, then anti-seize on both the threads and the bottom of the head. Whoever buys my vehicles, must be really surprised when they have to take something apart that I've worked on.

 

That's what I do! I also paint the area around the bolt!

 

I'm in the same boat as you. Both front plenum bolts snapped off just forward of the coolant tubes. I tried using a pair of vice grips and didn't get far. I gently wiggled them and they just broke off again. This is going to be a fun project.

 

I live in VA, so I don't think that it is a rust belt issue per se. I Believe that the thermostat gasket had been weeping slowly for years and the water caused those front 2 bolts to rust. I wire wheeled the housing that the water hose hooks too and painted it. Will probably just replace the bolts. Most everything I put back together gets some anit-seize on it.

 

You should replace the intake bolts anyway. According to theory, they are 'torque-to-yield'..... though I can't find anything to back that up anywhere, not even the service manual. When I pulled 'em though, they seemed awful brittle. Replacing them is just good insurance.

 

Yeah those as well as the plenum bolts are getting replaced. I will probably grind the plenum bolts down a little after reading about the bolts being a touch long from the factory contributing to the blowout of the gasket.

 

I bought the Hughes Plenum kit with new bolts and sent it to my kid's high school to be installed by the students and his teacher. I ended up coming in on a Saturday to complete it with the teacher. In the meantime, the students broke 2 of the new bolts. The teacher grabbed 2 of the original bolts and said that they were not torque to yield bolts. I told him that I thought they were. He said that he was certain that they were not. The teacher is a master mechanic with all of the ASE certifications and decades of experience. He had some explanation of how he could tell but I don't remember what that was.

However, Hughes provides new bolts with their kit which makes be think that there is a reason to change them. He put one original bolt in the middle on each side. Had I known that the students ruined 2 bolts I would have bought new ones. So far, I don't believe we have any issues.

Just my experience. It hasn't been many miles since the plenum was replaced though.

 

I was talking about Intake Manifold bolts by the way. The bolts that hold the plenum in place were replaced by the bolts from Hughes.

 

Maybe those kids were absent on "torque wrench theory" day. My father in law teaches auto body at a vocational school, he has some fun stories. I imagine it was a good learning experience on broken bolt extraction.