[crazypete]

So you good folks were right, half the studs were just hanging there. The carb must tip a bit under hard turns and break the seal just enough to stall out the motor.

I did noticed that my carb spacer to intake seal, which was done with rtv instead of a gasket was _solid_. I had to pry the spacer off with a screwdriver, it was sealed so well. So I was thinking that I never use the pcv or egr pasages under the carb for anything anyway, so I could rtv the carb carefully to the spacer and then rtv the spacer to the intake and then add the studs for show.

I've not had much success with taps or drilling out broken bolts. For aluminum, I usually get a bolt that has slightly bigger threads but a good taper. I then force it into place with a 2 foot breaker bar...effectivly brute force retapping the hole.

So my head swap has balooned into a carb rebuild, intake porting and head porting. I also learned that gas melts the goo stuck to pistons (also gives one a mad headache).