Never rely on a cheap torque wrench, a good one will last for your entire lifetime and be perfectly reliable!

here is a good one, and you need to go ahead an order it, because you still have to put this car together!

 

At this point, having failed at several attempts, you might consider having the car towed to a machinist shop. I know that you would like to take care of it yourself, but sometimes you have to know when to seek professional help. For mechanical reasons of course

 

Even if that was a logical option under the circumstances, machinist shops here don't disassemble parts from cars, there's no reason to tow it when I already have the pump separated from the car. Easy outs, as expected when I looked into them, seem to be very unreliable. I'm going to let a friend try one last ditch effort for it on Tuesday, if that doesn't work, it looks like I'll have to have it drilled and re-tapped, constructive advice is always appreciated though, so I would like to ask again if anyone here has experience with helicoils in aluminum? Would I be best off using a helicoil to maintain the 8mm size, or do I drill/re-tap to 21/64 or 9mm?

 

this depends on the wall thickness of the bolt hole - I have no way to assess that over the Interwebs, but retapping to a larger size is always better if you have the wall thickness to work with

Is that nice torque wrench in the mail yet, so we don't have a deja-vu?

 

I dont think he will make that mistake again. I am suprised it didnt crack the aluminum housing.

 

LOL You got that right man! I was telling my friend the other day I'd rather have the pulley come off due to lack of torque w/ engine running than have something like this ever happen to me again, a slipped belt is child's play in comparison!

Cowboy, I have to say, I've just simply made the rule to never use a torque wrench for anything under 100 ft-lb (excluding wheels). I think I would have the vast majority of mechanics agree with me on that newfound philosophy. Tight is tight, don't need a wrench to tell me that when the parts are so fragile.

 

Maybe backyard mechanics - real professionals use a torque wrench, and these parts are not fragile at all, with proper tools. If Toyota didn't consider the torque important, they wouldn't specify the torques to the exact inch-pound on some of them.

I feel bad that you overtightened your bolt and are having to develop that mechanic's feel of the proper torque range for each bolt size the hard way, but don't start talking crazy, a torque wrench is not optional!

In fact, if you think a bolt meant to be torqued at 25 foot pounds or whatever is fragile, just wait until you try to get a proper seal on the fuel tank plate where the torque is 2 ft lbs (26 inch pounds) - you will have a gassy smelling car interior if you over or under torque those - or trying to get a seal on the transmission pan whose bolts are about 5.5 ft.lbs. - in fact you need a whole other inch-pound torque wrench for both of these.

I use a torque wrench on every critical bolt on the car, and after you learn a few times the hard way, you will too! - In fact, I own 4 torque wrenches, just to have high accuracy in the torque range I am working on!

I have been using high quality torque wrenches (Snap-On, CDI, Precision Instruments, Proto, Matco, Mac, Utica) for 40 years, and I have NEVER had one fail. If you are gonna do you own car repair, you are saving a ton of money, invest some of that back into good tools!

 

Well, suit yourself. Perhaps 'machinist' shop was not the right word. Maybe 'machine shop'. And I did not mean to suggest that they were going to tear your engine down. Just work to get the stud out from the front like you were trying to do. I suggested outside professional help simply because this idler part is usually extremely critical to the life of your engine. Yours being a 92, not as much but still critical.

Another thing I always do when torquing is a 'sanity' check on the wrench. I torque in steps which gives me an idea that the wrench is working properly before I get too far. For instance, if the final torque is 25 ftlb, I might set the wrench to 10, then 20 and finally 25 in three passes. If I do not get that 'click' (or whatever feedback), pretty quickly on the first pass with light torque, then red flags go up and I back off.

According to your first post, you claim that your FSM did not say and wanted to know the torque value. So, what value did you set the torque wrench to when you broke off the bolt?

 

dang randal, you are one smart cookie to have even noticed that!

by the way, if he had the real Lexus factory repair manual, it plainly states in the timing belt procedure that the torque for the idler pulley bolts is Torque: 34.5 N·m (350 kgf·cm, 25 ft·lbf)

 

Randal and Cowboy, I did have it set to 25 ft-lb, I do use the real FSM, when I used the term "specs' I meant thread pitch, length, where the threads start, etc. I only know it was a high grade 14 mm bolt.

 

what kind of $20 torque wrench was this anyway?

 

Don't know the manufacturer, doesn't say on it.

I included some pics of the pump and block after removing the pump, at this point instead of a re-machine I think I'm going to order a new housing off eBay and retain all other parts inside the pump and replace the O ring on the block and filter bracket; both seemed a little hard.

 

Got the bolt out of the pump housing from the back, now to replace the bolt.... I hope the sole Lexus dealer here has one. Can't find one at any hardware or auto part retailers because of the uncommon threads but even more so the "shoulder" or "collar" on the bolt.


Also ordered a new idler pulley in the meantime since the dealer is a couple hundred km from me and there is a bad whiteout happening for the time being.

 

if you can wait a couple of days for shipping time, this is not a difficult bolt to find at an online Lexus dealership such as Sewell, Park Place, Lexus of South Atlanta parts, Lexus Parts Now, etc.

 

Yeah my dealer here has the bolt, they ordered it, I also went ahead and ordered new pump o ring and filter bracket o ring. Is there an alternative I can use for the oil strainer gasket? They want to charge $30 for it and that sounds kind of ridiculous to me.... I was thinking of maybe using some of the same gasket maker I'm going to use when re-sealing the pump and oil pan no.2.