I just bought my first Harley . But I realized it had a broken bolt in the rocker box (pic below which one) . I assume it had been driven for a while like this but the previous owners didn't tell me about it, I noticed it while tearing the engine down. It currently runs fine though . How hard is it to extract the bolt?

Thank you for your help!

To clarify, it isn't the Allen bolts, or the 12 point black long bolts. It is the middle hexhead bold, one of 3 on the bottom of the rocker box.

It is the middle bolt in the picture

 

I'm going to ask a few stupid questions (not unusual for me) Is the bolt just spinning, meaning stripped threads? Bolt head shear off? stripped head? or the bolt broke in half, meaning you can pull out the shaft with the threads still screwed in?

 

I bet it is not spinning and driven there pretty hard, broken by a combo of excessive torque and notorious HD butter-screws.
Since it looks like sticking out, I would try to weld over a bolt head.

 

The bolt is broken in half, the threads stay in the hole but the head comes out. There isnt enough room to pinch it with a vice grip or anything either.

 

The picture is just to show which bolt it is, its not a pic of my bike. My bike is put back together and sitting in the garage.

 

Oh, if it is broken in half, either they used the wrong length, or they drove it incorrectly and bolt threads got screwed up.
Hope for you it's the fomer.

 

If it's the hex head bolt, one of three, it's relatively soft and should be easy to get an easy-out extractor started. If you're not proficient with the procedure, I'd take it to a reputable mechanic and have them do it.

That's actually not a high torque bolt. It's only torqued to 10-14ft/lbs or 120-168in/lbs. Which is why it probably sheared. Chances are, someone before you did their own gasket change and they overtorqued that bolt, or there was a leak and they tightened it trying to stop it.

 

You can try a Easy Out.

 

Hopefully it doesnt have locktite on it, if so spray with penetrating oil and the do the easy out.

 

In preparation for using the easy out - try drilling through the center of the bolt with a LEFT TWIST drill bit. you just might get lucky and the left twist bit might spin the busted bolt out. If not, and you need to use the easy out, get good quality one and be careful to NOT break off the easy out in the bolt. That will cause a whole new bunch of problems.