desperate on a stuck screw

[posplayr]

I was actually gonna plan on doing this if I can get a hold of a dremel tool soon.

The vice grip suggestion is great, but they dont fit on the few bolts that are stuck on my bike
They are the ones on the stator cover on the corner by the starter.

So you have your stainless steel set on order already right?

[russellhartzell]

I have a harbor frieght version of the dremel and it works ok

[madbikebreaker]

Lets try it old school!

Soak that dang thing with PB blaster for a few days. Get 2 good chisels. One sharp, one dull head. Knock a notch with the sharpy and then use the big head one to tap it around. Has worked everytime for me. Takes flippin forever, but it will work.

[JCSkokos]

So you have your stainless steel set on order already right?

yes I do. Its scheduled to be here monday..


and for the chisel comment, I hadnt thought of that. I can try that tomorrow

[Kcwiro]

PB Blaster and HEAT... also you can try the old tighten then back out... but that thing is one of the more rusted screws I have seen

[JCSkokos]

the strange part though is I was able to muscle out all those rusted bolts on the intake boots...
on this one its the top two by the starter



and this one its the bottom right


as you might be able to tell, they are pretty beat to ****

[posplayr]

the strange part though is I was able to muscle out all those rusted bolts on the intake boots...
on this one its the top two by the starter



and this one its the bottom right


as you might be able to tell, they are pretty beat to ****

Harbor freight also have some left handed drill bits, center drill the screws so the heads fall off. Then you can use vice grips on the shank after the cover comes off.

I think you areusing the wrong scrw head, also I always (lightly) hammer the driver head into the screw to insure it is seated. Push hard you should not be stripping that many.

[JCSkokos]

I have a couple of those bits, Im just not sure if I am using them right because it they do absolutely nothing that i can see

[duaneage]

You could drill the head clean off and the screws will most likely drop out. The head is usually the problem, it galvanized to the case.

[JCSkokos]

alright, that makes sense too. I am going to try to borrow a dremel from my school's auto shop and try the flat-head approach first, then if that fails Ill try just drilling the heads off. Until I get the gaskets/gasket material I just want to get them out to put my new stainless ones in.

[posplayr]

alright, that makes sense too. I am going to try to borrow a dremel from my school's auto shop and try the flat-head approach first, then if that fails Ill try just drilling the heads off. Until I get the gaskets/gasket material I just want to get them out to put my new stainless ones in.

You can use either direction drill bit, getting a dremil cutting disk down into some of those holes is going to likely cut the cover. Just drilling the heads will be less likely to damage the cover.

Just figured no reason to drive it =in any further, but probably doesnt make much difference.

Put some masking/duct tape around the hole and just drill them out. Start with a small one and then move to a bigger one almost the size of the head.

[cowboyup3371]

I had a similar issue with one of them on mine. If you get a dremel cutting head and go real easy you might just be lucky enough to get a little cut in there. Don't try to take off more than the wheel will fit into. If that means you get an older wheel that has worn down some then try that. Then take your chisel and start working around. If you are real careful you'll make it.

Otherwise, try Posplayer's suggestion as he's a lot smarter on this stuff than I am.

[posplayr]

I had a similar issue with one of them on mine. If you get a dremel cutting head and go real easy you might just be lucky enough to get a little cut in there. Don't try to take off more than the wheel will fit into. If that means you get an older wheel that has worn down some then try that. Then take your chisel and start working around. If you are real careful you'll make it.

Otherwise, try Posplayer's suggestion as he's a lot smarter on this stuff than I am.

Those screws are not hardened so it will take longer to find a drill and bit then to drill off a screw head.

[kcorbin]

Since this is in the Tips and Tricks section, I just wanted to share my experiences with stuck screws to help others out if possible.

For the intake boot screws and case/sprocket covers, an impact screwdriver (from HarborFreight, of course) worked well for me even on really buggered up screw heads. A tip for those new to them is to make sure you are using the handle/grip to apply downward turning pressure before whacking it with the hammer. This way, you already have the screw driver head seated firmly in the screw head and are helping to apply force in the direction of extraction which in turn removes any slack/slop from the impact driver mechanism and insures all force from the impact is applied directly to the screw in a smooth motion.

Another problem I've heard why those screws tend to get so messed up in the first place is that they aren't really a #2 or #3 but something different from most screwdrivers in common use today.

But, moving on to the real gist of my post: fully broken bolt heads!

I had this happen to me while I was replacing all my ugly rusted exhaust manifold bolts with shiny new SS hex socket head bolts. My problem was also made more difficult because of the frame tube next to the bolt. Full clearance could be only be achieved by taking the engine off the frame.

So, I tried a few things I already knew to do: apply penetrating lube, whack with hammer/blunt punch, apply more lube, wait a few days applying additional lube periodically. Then I tried to spin it out with vise grips but no luck.

Then I cut a slot in the top and tried to get it out with an impact screwdriver. No luck there either.

OK, then a bit of research and a few more ideas:

I tried extreme heat with a propane torch and extreme cold with an inverted can of compressed air (like for cleaning computers) but no such luck.

Then I tried a bolt extractor/ez out. Not a basic fluted spiral one but a fancy one that claims to not break off inside the stuck bolt called something like Drill-Out. No luck there either. I broke it, but at least true to advertising it didn't break off inside the bolt.

Finally I resorted to one of my ideas that I had originally dismissed as too fraught with danger. I didn't want to damage the head and/or resort to a heli-coil type repair so I tried all the above methods first. Some had suggested drilling out the bolt with larger and larger drill bits but you have to be pretty much perfectly centered with your bolt to not end up destroying the original hole.

So, I went to the tool I find to be indispensable time and time again: my Dremel tool. I used it (with a flex shaft to really get in close, centered, and with maximum control) to first drill a hole all the way through the bottom of the bolt. Then, I used a small cylindrical grinding bit similar to this to start grinding the bolt away from the center out. As I got close to the outside of the bolt and near the tops of the aluminum head threads I was able to use a pick to pull out the steel threads from the bolt. Sometimes, I could pull out a full turn or two at a time. When I started to get near the middle of the bolt, I noticed that a few turns of threads weren't coming loose from the grooves no matter how hard I picked at them. These were the whole reason the bolt wouldn't come out with other methods: the steel threads had fused themselves to the aluminum head in a bond as strong as a weld. This wasn't a case of simple corrosion seizing.

To get past this, I kept grinding down through the bolt until the back 1/3 of the bolt came loose from the fused threads and I was able to screw that part all the way to the bottom of the hole with a screwdriver jammed in there. Then, I picked up a metric tap and die set (from Harbor Freight, once again) and proceeded to tap the hole out following the existing threads. This had the dual effect of smoothing/straightening any threads I had buggered up along the way by grinding as well as cutting out the fused-in steel. Once I did that I was able to back out the bolt portion in the bottom of the hole with the jammed in screwdriver quite easily and the hole was just as good as new.

So, in hindsight, I could have saved a lot of time and stress by going first to the Dremel tool, but hey, look what I learned along the way!

I hope this is helpful to others.

[Smokinapankake]

Ammonia. Common household ammonia, if you can get it down into the threads, will attack the aluminum, thereby eating it away just enough to let the screw go.
This has worked on aluminum seatposts stuck into steel bicycle frames many times over. Same principle, right?