breaking header bolts on driver side
 

bought a 2006 1500hd in march 2010, found a broke header bolt while replacing plugs near the #1 cylinder, took back to dealer and they had to take head off and get bolt drilled out at machine shop. now 3 months later have a large ticking sound and found another broke header bolt on same head except this time it is the last bolt on cylinder #7. any ideas??.
talked to service guy and he told me to bring back monday and stated that the engine (6.0L) has so much torque that this is a common problem on these style engines. i cant see me having to replace broke header bolts on a yearly basis.

grubbs11, I would like to direct message you about this issue if I may. Thank you for your time.

Jeff Morris, Chevrolet Customer Service

Very typical on the 6.0. I see it often. To remove the head to get the bolt out is ridiculous. I have never had to do that. Typical dealer move though. A GOOD independent shop can get it out without removing the head.

well what can i do different, because i don want to go through this every year. are they able to go to the next bigger size bolt. redrill and retap. what is the issue. chevy should half to fix this problem, it sounds like a very serious one to me.

you can email me at tgrubbs@ossid.com. but this sounds like a very serious problem to me.

what probly happened is they reused the old manifold bolts, if u want it to stop, i would look for polyurethane motor mounts to stop the twist

I just had my 2004 2500HD (6.0) in the exhaust shop for the same reason. The rear drivers side exhaust manifold bolt broke. Snapped the head off. They were able to get it out by removing the exhaust manifold, welding a nut on it and turning it out while heating it. The manager says he sees at least one a week just like this. He says the exhaust manifolds tend to banana warp, and to keep from breaking the manifold Chevy put bolts in that are intended to flex and break instead of breaking the manifold. This is VERY common on the 6.0 Try an exhaust shop next time.

well they had already fixed one time before(2 months earlier) so i would assume that this would be a warrranty fix. what will the exhaust shop do different

well how much are those motor mounts and what would the total installtion be.

You were more fortunate? than I was. My problem did not surface until after the warrenty period, so I had to deal with it myself ($). At some point you may have to do the same because my understanding is this is not a "one" time event. I've been told this is an on going problem with this model(6.0) and the fact that it took only 2 months to break a second bolt on your vehicle shows this. The exhaust shop that fixed mine charged considerably less than the dealership, and their experience with this problem was evident in how fast they repaired the problem. Chevrolet has a problem, that unfortunately we will have to deal with, but I still would not own anything else. Good Luck