Leaking Antifreeze from Head to Exhaust Manifolds

[tcp710]

So I had been getting my 67 valiant ready for a 6hr road trip, thought I had it all ready to go. Drive it to work and back as a test drive, when I notice the rear drivers side exhaust manifold bolt is bubbling.

Seeing that I just rebuilt the engine, I thought this bolt may have shook loose and just needs to be tightened. I was wrong. The threads were stripped. That was over 2 weeks ago, now I have lost all motivation.

Not really looking forward to tearing the heads off to fix this problem. I think while I am fixing the one with a threaded insert, I might as well fix all 4 that go into the water jacket (both heads), because if one is bad, the chances that the others are bad too. I only want to do this once.

Has anyone else done this without pulling the engine? I was planning on just removing the carb, intake, rocker arms, pushrods, then the heads. Fix the heads, then reassemble in reverse order.

I am not a fan of heli-coils, so i was going to use EZ-Loks, similar, just different.

 

[fishy68]

I had the same problem on a 360 once. Same bolt too. Had headers on it too which made it even more difficult. I pulled the steering column and unbolted the header and let it drop down and was able to get in to it. I don't like Heli-coils in a situation like this as they tend to leak. What I did was find a stud with 3/8" coarse threads on one end and 5/16" threads on the other and drilled and tapped the head to 3/8" and installed the stud. Never had a problem with it again.