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I replaced the crankshaft in a Honda GCV160 vertical shaft (lawnmower) engine that I got for cheap on craigslist, and I put Hondabond on the cylinder barrel before joining it and the oil pan together. When I went to tighten the bolts attaching the cylinder barrel and oil pan to each other, I tightened them all partially and then set my torque wrench to the specified 9 ft lbs and tightened them in the correct pattern. When I went to do this, a couple of the bolts just kept turning and turning; one actually snapped in half (torque wrench never clicked). Would it be best to buy new bolts and just tighten by feel (if my torque wrench is bad since I got it pretty cheap), or would the threads be damaged in the cylinder? Will it damage the liquid gasket if I were to replace the bolts with new ones after the liquid gasket has completely cured?

What is the range of your torque wrench?

Setting it at 9 foot pounds may have not been enough to make an audible click. Some torque wrenches will barely do anything at all when set at the extreme low of the scale.

You would have probably been better off using an inch pound torque wrench and then set it to 108 inch pounds, which is equal to 9 foot pounds.

Too late now. But that's probably why they stripped out and/or snapped.

Tighten until the bolt gets loose again?

9ft lbs is about what a light ham fisted mechanic can do with a wrench. Use and in. lb wrench next time.

Yeah, I wasn't thinking. I will remember to use an in. lb torque wrench from now on for fasteners requiring a lower amount of torque, and hopefully I will avoid a situation like this again. Thank you for the replies!

Just curious, was it 1/2" drive or 3/8" drive?

At any rate, hopefully the bolts stripped out and not the threads. But even so, you can re-tap for a size or two larger and see how that works out.

The torque wrench was 3/8". I took the bolts out one by one today and found they all threaded back in (minus the one I broke in half and one other bolt I discovered that had its threads expanded and about to break). I re-tightened the bolts that I could using just a screwdriver handle type driver. The liquid gasket should be okay, correct? Also, should I buy all new bolts or just replace the broken ones? Does anyone know of a cheap (yet still reliable) inch lb torque I could buy? On the lower end of price spectrum, are the beam style more accurate/reliable than the click style?

If these screws are just holding the oil pan on, they don't need to be super tight. Your hondabond gasket compound should be fine unless the oil pan got moved around before it dried.

I let it sit for about 3 or 4 days before I did anything with the engine again, so the gasket should be fine.