icanfixall
Official GMM hand model
Well this is an idea why this happened.. Seeing that the trans was out and some work was being done. I know what could have happened to the crank bolts. If the heavy cast iron flexplate was on the engine and the guy changed to the lighter stamped steel flexplate WITHOUT the crank spacer he would bottom out all the crank bolts in the flange. This happened to me when I got my BTS tran. Seems the machine shop that made the special crank spacer thats no longer available for BTS allowed the bolts to go all the way thru my crank and bottom out on the bearing radius rounding off the first thread. I did this on 3 bolts till I saw what was happening. As I tightened the bolts feeling them stop I noticed the plate was loose. Tight bolts and the plate starter gear was touching the stater gear... Not good at all. Then trying to back out the three bolts with a rounded thread on the end was pure hell. I got them out but they were damaged. The crank on the other hand was not fubared. I just used a tap coated in that really heavy axle grease from the early part of last century. Crap sticks well to that. I tried a die nut on the bolts but not much of a deal there so I ground off the first thread. Then they hand threaded in with no resistance. A request went out to this forum for this magical special spacer and I ended up with 2 of them plus the one BTS finally sent me AFTER I gave them the bad one they sent me plus a good one for comparrison. So thos po may have not known about the special spacer and went hell bells tightening the bolts till they pulled threads. Now thats a ture bonehead shadetree mechanic. Bolt is tight but still loose... Add more brute force to "make it right"... Yea... Thats it buddy... Tighten it till it bleeds Force it till it fits... Now whos the boss ya little ******......
Oh hell... I ruined it... Now what am I going to do....
