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Money saving tip for Elbow replacement

sandkicker

sandkicker

Outstanding Contributor
OK, if your the Chris @ Dockside of the world, you have the tools, however....

While working on replacing the exhaust elbows on my FWC 5.7 MIE, I discovered that I had to install a 3/4 NPT brass plug in the elbow to block off one of the ports. This plug has a allen head hex female drive. My existing Allen Drive set stops a size or two too small and the set that had the correct size was $50 and overlapped in size half my existing set. And...surprise!!! none of my local tool sources ( Sears, HF, etc.) carried single sockets. I went to my local Mon and Pop hardware store hoping they had one ( they did, not the size I needed) and had a bright idea..

See pix below... A $1.14 (incl tax) solution. Bolt head is sized for the brass plug but otherwise self explanatory. Needed two nuts as I gave my deep socket set to my son. The nuts are backed away from the bolt head for clarity in the photo.
Much better than the alternative which was driving the brass plug with a pipe wrench on the last thread and a half and guessing torque. Also, two nuts jammed gives you a shot to remove the plug if that's what you need to do.

. Cheapo ALLEN Driver.jpg
 
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Smart.

Amazing how manufacturers keep sticking it us mechanics with new fastener heads that require a special socket set (like Torx and other crap).

Jeff
 
And then there is what I call the "big boxification of the US" and the "profit optimizing" by manufacturers. Very hard to find a place to buy stuff other than the "sets" that some purchasing agent a thousand miles away decides to stock that some jobber is hustling. Wanted to buy a 3/4-10 pipe thread tap to chase the threads in the elbow that Mercruiser decided to save $0.04 on by not preventing paint from getting in the threads. HELLO!!! for what they charge for those elbows a few pennies for "caplugs" ( or even a circle of painter's tape!!) would not break them. No... push the labor back to the customer. Not all that long ago, I could go to any number of places and find individual taps to buy. Sears (or any other big box store) didn't have individual taps that size but they did have a whole assortment of pink hammers...
 
Bob, a correctly sized "high nut" or "coupling" nut slipped into a socket works also.

FYI.... always apply some heat to the surrounding cast iron before you attempt to remove a port plug like this.

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