[i4abuygto]

On my 79 TA, I finally found time to remove the newly installed heater box and I installed a seal against the firewall.

As Murphy would have it, I broke the lower stud behind the passenger side head when reinstalling the heater box. I didn't think it was that tight when the stud broke but obviously - the king of overtightening strikes again.

Does anyone have any ideas on finding a new stud?

Any recommendation on just leaving it with only the two mounted studs and nuts. I am sure you the seal will not be uniform around the blower housing with only two studs holding.

Has anyone delt with this and what is the fix?

Does anyone have a torque spec or recommendation on the housing stud nuts?

Thanks guys.

[nUcLeArEnVoY]

Which stud are you talking about? One of the two that are integrated/welded into the metal frame of the heater box, or the one that is clipped onto the outer edge and has the integrated ground strap?

If it's the latter, they reproduce it and you can find it on eBay. I had to replace mine with this one because I bent mine beyond accepting the nut along the entire thread: https://www.ebay.com/itm/393981832146

The only problem with the repro one is that it doesn't include the ground strap, which is extremely important since it prevents the coolant from degrading the heater core via electrolysis. What I did was just purchased a generic groundstrap (roughly 5-6") and relocated the large eyelet to the bottom mounting screw for the heater box (the ones with the teethed washers that you access from inside the car).

As for the ones that are part of the metal frame, there is a guy on YouTube that goes over replacing the heater core for his 1980 (or 1981, not sure) and he runs into the same issue and describes what he did.

[i4abuygto]

Which stud are you talking about? One of the two that are integrated/welded into the metal frame of the heater box

It is the lower one that is integrated into the heater box - I haven't removed the box yet so I don't know exactly what is there to work with on the broken stud. I know the stud broke right at the base of the nut which means I should have some bolt there to work with.
I thought about just welding a good 1/4" threaded stud to the broken stud. Or, maybe JB weld it and rethread it.
These studs must not take much to tighten- I hardly put any torque on it when I was tightning it down.

As for the ones that are part of the metal frame, there is a guy on YouTube that goes over replacing the heater core for his 1980 (or 1981, not sure) and he runs into the same issue and describes what he did.

Thanks, I will try to find this YouTube video.