Pic is of the passenger side turbo, the bolt I'm pointing to.


The socket (3/8" drive) was too fat and I ended up torquing the bolt sideways. What can I do about this? I'm worried I'm going to have to take the manifold off and cut the bolt head.

Here's a pic of the driver's side turbo with the same problem (socket is too big to fit) and I'm not about to strip this one. What's the proper way to go about removing it? Again the bolt is the one my finger is on.

 

Do you have the motor completely out? If so, get some long, skinny-nosed vice-grips and clamp down on the sucker and just get it started with those. It may not move much, but if you can get it started you can finish it with the allen key probably.

I also have a favor to ask of you. Would you be able to get me some pictures of how exactly the pre-turbo intake tubes connect to the face of the turbo, and any bolts that would need to be disconnected to remove it? And could you pm those to me, please? I'd greatly appreciate it.

 

With the amount of force it took to break the others free I have serious reservations about that working, though I'm going to give it a try. Noob question, does heating with a torch more than once do anything significant?

I'll PM those pics

 

Those are hardened cap bolts, so I don't think you will get much purchase on them with any kind of vise grip... At this point, heating will just make things worse - these are bolts not nuts, and expanding them will work against you. I would find a longish regular hex bolt that fits tightly inside the bunged up hex hole and comes up past the manifold tube, and weld it to the cap screw. Then you can use a breaker bar to get it out. You're going to have to replace the original bolt anyway...
Jim

 

^ It's not like the bolt will stay permanently expanded, I thought the idea behind heating was that the nut/bolt heated at different rates and expanded at different rates, causing a lot of stress on the rust/whatever that's holding them together, freeing it up a bit.

In case anyone else has this problem, the manifold is going to have to come off and get an allen key welded on. A couple tips: If you can't torque the nut/bolt/whatever at 90*, don't torque it at all. And use the right tools. If I had gone out and bought an extended allen socket I wouldn't be in this mess right now; I'm going to have to buy one anyways to get welded.

 

If its already stripped you have to use a small die grinder with a mini cutting disk. Definitely not fun I just did one and yes heating it up with a torch will help tremendously however is questionable if your reusing the turbos