Normally, I wouldn't pose a question about how to remove stuck bolts or stripped bolts. But this one has a twist. I was disassembling the front wheel on my shovelhead rebuild and came across difficulty removing the bolts that hold one of the front brake discs on the hub. Someone (not me) broke a hex wrench off trying to remove the bolt and a piece of it is still in the bolt. It's rusted in and too small to get a vice grip on it. Any ideas on how to extract it? I might be able to weld something to it, but the wheel itself is aluminum and I'm not sure what that sort of heat might do to it.



A second bolt is stuck and the hex is stripped. I'm not sure if there's enough metal to drill it out and retap (or if I can find an acceptable recessed bolt to use if I retap). Thoughts on this issue, too?

 

At this point it doesn't matter. Cut a notch in the bolt and with a chisel, tap it counter clockwise.

 

if you can find some Kroil an spray it and behind it. I had a rusty old jeep an it was the best penetrating oil I ever used an I tried a lot of them. Spray it an let it soak 2 times....if you can get an impact driver that has the different tips an when you hit it with a hammer it turns it as it shocks it.

http://www.kanolabs.com/

 

Great idea. I used generous amounts of PB Blaster and did smack them all a few times. That got most of them out.

I made progress with the bolt with the broken off Allen head wrench in it. After fussing around trying to get a vice grip on it without success, I was able to get another pair of pliers on the broken piece of tool. And I got it out. I'll try getting the bolt itself out tomorrow.

As for the stripped one, I've borrowed a Speedout and will try that tomorrow, too. Need to use it on the brake caliper mounting bolts as well!

 

Heat the bolt, it was probably installed with red locktite and then use one of the described methods to remove it.

 

You know, I had never thought about this approach until I googled "how to remove a stripped hex bolt" and saw a picture of this. It's better than 50/50 that I WON'T reuse the disc either, so if I score it up a little removing this bolt, that shouldn't matter... thanks for the tip!

 

All of the others used red, so this one did, too, I'm sure.

Does heating red loctite loosen it?

 

Kroil is amazing, never go without it!!!

 

Heating softens the red loctite breaking it's hold.

 

Kroll, huh? Definitely gonna get me some!

I was successful today. And thanks to RANGER73 for the advice. Slotting the heads and beating the hell out of them in a counterclockwise direction was the trick! Although halfway through this process I realized the bolt holes went all the way through the hub, so I was able to spray some PBblaster in from the backside. I believe that helped too. Poor man's Kroll, perhaps?

I had a propane torch ready to go, to heat things up. But with all the PB blaster sprayed around, I didn't think that would be a good idea. It made me nervous just using the Dremmel drill and having sparks fly.

If there was a negative, it's that when I was cutting slots in the bolt heads I also cut small slots in the disc. So that pretty much meant I needed new discs. However, I pulled out the digital calipers (which I would have done anyway) and measured their thickness. Both disks were under the 0.20 inches that my service manual says is the minimum thickness. So I would have replaced them anyway. Silver lining!

Thanks for all the help!