Broken valve cover bolt...best way to take care of this?

[93civicracer]

So I was going to replace the headgasket and install my ARP head bolts...then when I went to take off the valve cover the upper right bolt spun freely so I pulled it out and it was broken...there's about a half-inch of thread stuck in the hole, and oil in the hole too while the rest are clean.

Blanco, you told me to take off the rocker arm and take it into a machine shop in this case to have the broken piece extracted or something.

But it turns out the upper 2 valve cover bolts screw directly into the head, not the rocker arms. So here's what I have to ask.

Should I:

A: Call a guy out here to extract the broken piece and find a new set of valve cover bolts?

B: Just pull the head and take it to a machine shop to make sure it's all straight, since I've been driving it like this since I checked the timing a few weeks back.

Also, will d16z6/d15b7 valve cover bolts work?

And when I put the valve cover on last time after checking timing, I he manual I just torqued them all to 10 Nm...And when I pulled all the bolts out, it turned out the threads on the other valve cover bolt up top side (closer to the driver) are expanded closer to the end, while the threads on one of the lower bolts are expanded closer to the top of the threads. The other 2 bolts are fine, even though I torqued them all the same.

Sorry for the long ass post, I just wanna make sure I do this right for the first and hopefully last time.

 

[t3t4delsol]

either use a tool like grab-it, or drill the hole larger, use a tap and die to re thread the hole and go find a bolt at a hardware store

 

[Jared759]

either use a tool like grab-it, or drill the hole larger, use a tap and die to re thread the hole and go find a bolt at a hardware store

Thats what I did when it happened to me.

 

[93civicracer]

Somehow, I knew I should have bought that grab-it. I'll just call up an extractor.

But I still gotta go to Honda for a set of valve cover bolts. Does anyone know if I can use the same ones as for a d16z6 in my D15B Vtec?

 

[93civicracer]

bump, does anyone know if I can use d16z6 valve cover bolts on my d15b vtec?

 

[99sidude]

Buy an extractor bit. Its not that hard to do. I would never pay someone to fix that. The z6 is almost identical to a d15b vtec so its my guess that the z6 bolts will work.

 

[awptickes]

Any USDM d-series VC bolt will work, as long as you've got the same displacement, and use the same location's bolt.