Hello,

Let me start this by saying I'm pretty new to working on cars, so bear with me if I'm missing anything obvious.

I'm having some trouble deciding on what to do with my engine. I have an Evo 9. I took out the turbo to get a broken stud drilled out. Kind of a pain in the ***, took the machine shop half a day and around 6 drill bits, cost me $200. Ouch. As I was reinstalling the exhaust manifold, a stud on the head started to spin freely at nowhere near the factory torque spec. It pulled the threads out of the head . I'm going to have to Time-Sert it. The question is do I do it, or do I get it taken to a shop.


Does this look like it desperately needs to be resurfaced/treated? The rust is a little scary to the inexperienced eye.

Bonus picture of intake valves looking quite dirty. Normal?


If I do it:

All I have to do is stress out about messing up the drilling, tapping, and installing of the Time-Sert, after which I get to install the turbo, exhaust manifold, radiator, and my new full exhaust system and pray nothing else breaks (seems impossible at this point in time). If I do it right, this will cost me around $100 for the Time-Sert kit and only about 5 years of my life in stress. Not a bad deal! If I mess up, I get to drop a few thousand on a new head which I desperately do not want to do.

If I get it taken to a shop:

I push the car down from the second floor of the garage to the street, and hopefully don't crash into a wall while doing so. I pay a tow truck $200 to take me to a shop. I pay the shop $200-$400 to install the Time-Sert (which every shop I've asked has said they will do by hand, no drill press so there goes 100% precision). Then either I cough up another $200 to take it back, and put everything else on by myself (and hope no other head studs strip), or more likely pay the shop to put everything else on so I can drive it out of there. No idea what that will end up costing- let's say 5 hours, so $700-$1000. Not cheap.

While I'm at the shop I also want to get my third gear grind taken care of, and my A/C looked at (the temp knob still binds after changing gears and cables). Also I put on Ohlins so I'll need a corner balance and alignment. Oh and of course a tune.

One of the shops I talked to said they'd warranty the engine head if they messed up, which sounds good in theory. However, I'm guessing that if they mess up it won't materialize immediately, and it might be a while until the improperly sealed manifold gasket blows or something. After which I doubt they take accountability and rebuild my engine for free...


That brings us to the following: Given that none of my pictures have enough red flags for everyone here to tell me to go to a shop and pay any amount they say to save my car, I am thinking that if all of the shops are confident that they can install a Time-Sert by hand, I can probably do it as well. As scary as it is to get it wrong, I feel like it can't be THAT hard to drill out the old threads (there is a huge pilot hole conveniently placed for me, and the Time-Sert kit comes with a guide), tap (probably the riskiest one for me), and install the insert. Hell, there are video guides of people on Youtube installing them in 5 minutes without much prep.

When I asked the question on Reddit, everyone said to do it myself. The only thing stopping me is the multiple threads I came across on this forum warning the OP that it's best to take it to a shop, as messing up means catastrophic failure. Sorry for rambling, looking forward to reading everyone's thoughts on the matter.

 

Do a compression and leak down test now. This way you can see if the cylinder head or block have any issues. This way you can pull the head and have the machine shop repair the stripped hole as well as any other cylinder head repairs.
You can install a timesert. Drill bits self center on holes. Tap the hole and go slow.
If you have the time to do everything yourself then you will save the most money. The hole is already there so the drill bit isnt going to be able to drill somewhere else.