Sheared exhaust manifold stud

[Lopez]

Somehow, in over 15 years of spanner twirling, I have never needed to remove a snapped off stud.

My 205 GTI has a sheared exhaust manifold stud. It was missing, and I hoped it had just vibrated out, but no. The stud has broken near the end, so there can only be 5 or 6 mm of it left inside the head. I tried winding a new stud into the threads I can access but it's not enough to hold the new stud, so I'm going to have to extract the old one.

Difficulties:

Acces is tight. The XU has the manifold up against the bulkhead so there really isn't very much room to get in there. You could get in with a 90 degree drill I think but there is no way you could centre punch the stud or anything like that. So, I'm worried I wouldn't go in straight and would just end up with a wonky mess of a hole

With the head being alloy I'm also concern of knackering the thread, which would mean no longer being able to use an easy out and having to helicoil the head, something else I've never had to do and again a task I wouldn't be delighted about doing with the engine in situ.

Any tipsbefore I take the engine out?

[cobblers]

Put a nice new gasket on and bolt the thing up with the remaining studs, you've got a decent chance of getting away with it. I've had loads of cars turn out to have 2 or 3 studs missing or loose, and the exhaust sealed fine

[Lopez]

Already tried that unfortunately, no joy - it's for the first cylinder. If it was one of the middle ones it would probably be alright.

[Ads 19]

its an easy enough lump to get out. anything else need attending to whilst your at it?

[gruss]

Is there not a local engineering services shop that can come out and drill/tap/helicoil etc?

[murran]

engine or head off really.

id pull the head and do a rebuild/decoke/stem seals while your there.

[Good Scrap]

probably less work to lift the head, then you can drop it into a machine shop to get it drilled on a milling machine, or if you have pillar drill then do it with that. pulling the engine will save the cost of head gasket etc. but cost you in time and mean you will have to drill it out with a pistol drill - perfectly do-able

don't use an easi-out, in my opinion they are only any good for bolts that break when tightening (rare), if it's snaped/seized in then chances are the easi-out will break when trying to remove it, they are propper hard and you will need cobalt drills or worse to get it out.
stick to drilling it, centre punch it then ideally use an engineering centre drill then work up to the minor diameter of the thread and picking out the remains with a dart or similar. I've managed to get them well enough centred that the remnants of thread come out looking like a spring.

is there any possible access from within the car? - i knew of someone who used a holesaw through the bulkhead to make access to replace a core plug on a lotus sunbeam to save taking the engine out

if you lift the head and want it drilling out, i have access to milling machine and am in hinckley