In preparation for this riding season I decided to replace the oil filter cover studs on my 1980 GS550 E that the previous owner stripped. I was able to get two of them out quite easily but the third one fought me for days. I tried heat, an impact driver, penetrating lubricant, tapping it with a hammer, every thing I could find and my buddies to think of I tried. Eventually the stud snapped and I figured its time to get out the bolt extractor set. I've had luck with extracting bolts in the past but not this time. This time the extractor snapped and was lodged in the broken stud. I picked up some small cobalt drill bits to drill out the hardened bolt extractor and the rest of the broken stud but those didn't seem to work either. I moved on to my last ditch effort, grinding as much out as possible with a diamond tip grinding bit for my dremel. This did the trick and I was eventually able to redrill the hole and insert a helicoil. Unfortunately I suck and caused some damage with the grinding bit causing me to drill crooked and a bit off the mark. This meant that the new stud I had to replace the old one was crooked. With some finagling, and to my great relief, I was able to get the cover to slid on and bolted down with the acorn studs. I filled it up with oil and it wasn't leaking! I started the bike and a nice thin stream of oil began pooling on the floor of my garage.
I'm at a loss for what I should try next. I was thinking of removing the stud and filling the hole with silicone and putting a bead of silicone around the filter cover and just using the other 2 studs to tighten the cover down but I'm not sure that will work.
Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.
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