Gearbox housing engine mount screw holes stuffed - solution?

[Dodgy Haro]

Hi ppl - I've got an EG Civic project that I picked up a while back with a B16A conversion. I am slowly getting around to patching the car up bit by bit. The biggest concern I have are the bolt holes in the transmission housing where the engine mount bolts onto - as you can see from the pictures, I came across these when I removed the old factory mount. The bolt holes to the driver's side engine mount were cracked off at some point on two of them and the third one is starting to crack too. :eek:

There is barely enough thread to hold both engine mount and gearbox together.

Now I know that in an ideal world, I would just swap the gearbox housing out for another one but seems overkill for just three bolt holes.

Just wondering people's thoughts on whether there are other options available such as using a heli coil kit, drilling further (I doubt there is much mass?) or welding and redrilling.

I am yet to let the fingers do the walking and call up the usual yards for both price and availability of a replacement box - won't surprise me if the cost of a gearbox probably is almost the same as what some EK and EG civics go for these days off Gumtree. :(

[fn2au]

Sell you my fn2 box m8. 6 speed is life

[rc_]

That's pretty bad, you might be able to get away with drilling and tapping a bit deeper as long as you don't go all the way through. You should aim for a thread engagement of 1.5 x bolt nominal diameter.

I had one hole there that was stripped, the hole was only tapped about half way down so it was easy enough to just tap deeper and use a longer bolt.

On yours 2 of the bosses are cracked off so you may not be able to save them. Helicoils won't save that if it's already cracked.

You would need to cut off the old damaged boss and weld a new piece to drill and tap if you can't drill any deeper.

[bennjamin]

Mate the gearbox has been in a accident - likely the original chassis suffered a hit from the drivers side and cleanly plucked the mount from the box.

Anyway , only fix is to replace the housing with another from a used box. Try and find a blown box somewhere or from a wreckers. They can be found

PS don't just retap or helicoil etc
You MIGHT be able to fill it with a big splash of alloy plus enough to grip around then retap it - but it still seems easier to find another housing

[Super-DA9]

+1 for sourcing a cheap/blown b series gearbox to replace the housing.

[Dodgy Haro]

Cheers ppl - bugger ... agree with the above that a new housing is the way to go. I've already started searching and think I've found a replacement. In any case, means the gearbox will have to come out. Thanks for the offer re the 6 spd but I'm doing everything on a budget atm and just want a simple B16 5 spd setup for now ... :)