2 Bolts Sheared off on Intake Manifold when trying to reinstall

hi guys,

After doing the EGR service on my car, i'm trying to reinstall everything. My question ultimately is, what order should i be re-installing everything. The EGR is currently sitting in it's correct position and that part is basically done except for the EGR pipe.

The EGR pipe is currently on the intake manifold and it's just not perfectly lining up. (See attached photos).

When trying to install it all, I had 2 of the bolts that go into the intake manifold (see photo of the part i'm talking about), shear off when trying to torque it down to 21 ft lbs. For some reason it doesn't feel like they are tight, but the bolts broke? Is this due to the alignment of everything? My Torque wrench works fine, but it didn't click at all before it broke the bolt.

I purchased new bolts/removed the old ones. Where I'm at is intake manifold re installation.

 

For the record, I didn't try to loosely install the EGR pipe to the EGR valve first, and then installing it to the manifold.

I wanted to ask here first before re-attempting anything.

First one I used was a 1/2 inch drive, which was 20 to 150.

After this happened, I went and bought a 3/8 inch torque wrench yesterday because I assumed my torque wrench was broken too, this one is 5-80 ft lbs.

I'm thinking it's an alignment issue causing some unnecessary stress on these bolts. The reason TWO bolts broke is because I tried it again this morning with the new torque wrench, same thing.

 

I did do it by hand, both times, that wasn't it. I know better than to use a impact wrench on plastic stuff. My question ultimately is what order should i be doing everything. As you see, the egr pipe is not perfectly aligned.

Should I loosen everything so I have some play?

 

I think what I will do is loosely connect the EGR pipe to the EGR valve, and leave it disconnected from the intake manifold. Torque down the manifold first, then install the EGR pipe to the manifold.

Does this sound like the right order? Sorry for the stupid questions, in a lot of the videos they don't really show the re-install, they just say "reverse the process" or skip through it.

 

I think that this is a case of user error, more than the torque wrench, but I agree with you 1000% that's why I bought the 3/8 version. I'm using harbor freight torque wrenches too for the record lol

The EGR pipe is currently torqued down to the intake manifold, and it's not perfectly lining up. I should have had both sides relatively loose. I think my best approach is to torque the intake manifold down FIRST, before installing anything to it, including the throttle body.

 

i love ray, i watch his stuff all the time him and ericthecarguy are awesome. Chrisfix too.When it comes to plastic shit with gaskets, i'm usually extra cautious and i'll go ahead and torque them, but this time I was not cautious enough and got a little comfortable thinking it would all just come together ezpz, but nope lol. I'm kinda glad it happened because now it all lined up pretty nicely and I know next time what not to do.

I just got it done by installing/torquing down the manifold first even before the throttle body. That should be a disclaimer in every one of these repair videos.

 

You might like vice grip garage if you like those guys. I like that guy a lot. He goes and finds the most rusty pieces of crap and tries to drive them home hundreds of miles away. I learn a lot from his ghetto techniques lol

 

Yeah that was the mistake, I had it preinstalled onto the intake manifold side, it probably would've been fine if it wasn't torqued down. In any case, I still would recommend installing the intake manifold even before putting the TB back on. It's probably not a huge deal but I imagine the weight of the TB puts a little extra stress on that manifold. can't say for sure but just glad it's solved.

 

Yea thats what I did. I left the coolant hoses on (I watched merv's video in the past for this, and he mentioned you ). I just hung it somewhere while I did the intake manifold/EGR stuff

I did not deal with coolant at all in this whole repair. Instead of pulling out the EGR cooler/it's hoses, I removed the two studs in the back of the EGR cooler so it wasn't connected to the exhaust and so that I could move it to the side and then I used a coat hanger to clear the EGR cooler passageways and then used an air hose/compressor to blow out the crap from inside of the cooler. Worked great, lots of flow coming through now. I had already removed the annoying nut from the bottom of the cooler so all I had to do was take the two in the back out. The compressed air worked really really well. The EGR valve itself I cleaned thoroughly.

My car only has 105k miles on it at the moment so it wasn't TOO obstructed, but i'm confident that I got all of the blockage out. I air hosed that thing for a good 20 minutes lol and made sure my compressor was full of pressure before going at it again, each time.