Rounded off rotor bolt

JimboM

I've had a bit of a mare trying to take the rotor off one of my wheels. One of the bolts was particularly tight and the driver has sliped in the head of the bolt and rounded off the Torx socket. Any ideas on how I'm going to get this bugger out ?

Cheers

Jim

nicklouse

cut a slot in it.

heat it up with hot water.

use a bigger bit in it.

JimboM

nicklouse wrote:

cut a slot in it.

Didn't work

heat it up with hot water.

Didn't work, nor did having a go at it with a small blowtorch

use a bigger bit in it

Couldn't get a bigger bit in the hole

.

In the end I dragged out the welder and tacked a piece of rod to it, to give me some leverage - that did the trick

craker

crikey that's some fix. Have you warped the disk?

JimboM

mr_si wrote:

crikey that's some fix. Have you warped the disk?

Surprisingly it's come out unscathed, or at least it looks fine !

I only used a couple of small tacks and the rest of the rotor bolts were in place so think that helped to stop it warping.

Nice sense of achievement when you overcome these annoying pitfalls though

ramemtbers

jeez. extreme. but it worked. hey well done.

Northwind

Yeah, that's one of the classic last resorts, it's easier than spark erosion The heat helps unseize the bolt too so you get 2 for the price of one. On the other hand not that many people have welders

ramemtbers

either that or they cant weld. 8)

Northwind

Yeah, that's the category I'm in- can haz welder, no can haz welds. But I can blow holes in bits of metal like nobody's business.

Clem

At least you could get to the bolt - I've got a Campag road rear mech which some fool has rounded off the screw head on.

Tried cutting a slot in it but metal too weak to take this, drilled a hole into it and put an easy-out in and that sheared the head off.

Now I'm left with a screw with no head that's shielded by the carbon shroud of the mech... I can drill a smaller hole into the screw but I'm not sure how that's going to take me forward as there's no way of gripping the screw now...

ride_whenever

try drilling it out with a reverse drill bit.

Clem

Yes, that's the idea of the easy-outs... I can't find one thin enough to do that on the threaded part alone.

Northwind

Look on the bright side, it didn't do the usual easy-out thing of breaking off in the bolt, leaving you with a super-hard easy-out fragment to drill through. Bloody horrible things in small sizes. Left handed drill bits can be very effective though, but you've got to be pretty good to drill a perfectly straight hole.

No way of dismantling the mech and getting to the other side of the bolt?

Trouble here is the bolt is obviously properly seized, it wasn't just bad workmanship that damaged the head, the fact that the bolt snapped before it moved tells you that. So add to the equation a buttload of plusgas. And if it's in aluminium, some good solid taps from a course-grade hammer could distress the threads just enough to loosen the bolt, though that's a little medieval. Heat's going to be difficult, a lefthander bit will put some heat in though. Or if you've got a powerful soldering iron and a lot of patience, that works too.

Good luck!