Quite a while back I put in some chrome bleeder valves in my calipers. I noticed that when I took out the factory bleeder screw it didn't seem as smoothly threaded as I thought it should be. When I put in the new chrome one, however, it went in just fine... a little stiff but fine. I figured it was stiff because I didn't chase the threads since I was able to finger start it.

Now I have decided to put in speed bleeder valves. When I took the chrome screw out... uhoh. (Earlier bleeding only loosened the screw a bit and no problem was noticed). So I'm guessing that the original screw was cross threaded at the factory. You cannot use a normal tap to fix this because of the chamfered well at the bottom of the bleeder screw hole.

While leafing through a J&P catalog I noticed that they have a heli-coil kit for this specific application (they are an odd size). I also figure that if they are stocking such a kit, this must be a common (or sorta common) problem. Has anyone else experienced this problem? (I know if wasn't me... finger tighten always... especially into aluminum). I want to let others know if this happens to be more normal than it should be.

Thanks.

C#