[dseely1]

I am trying to put the floorboards onto my 2005 TBA. The right side ......the foot control mounting plate that bolts into the control bar.....the bolt will not budge. In the process I have now stripped out the head of the bolt. I have tried tapping it with a hammer. I have tried WD40. I have tried a drummel, thinking that I could then use a huge slotted screwdriver, but the cutting wheel will not fit in there to get to it. Please give me some help here. Thanks,
David

 

[dkreidel]

Is this really a bolt or a cap screw?

 

[dseely1]

It is the bolt that mounts the right foot peg plate (that also lets the rear brake hydraulics mount to it) to the control bar.

 

[dkreidel]

Hmmm - I have Bonnevilles, so what I was asking is if it was an allen head cap screw or a hex head bolt (for using a external wrenching hex socket on).

allen head cap screw (round exterior with internal wrenching hex). You can try an Imperial allen wrench and see if you can drive it in the stripped metric recess. I'd suggest a tool that connects to your 3/8" drive ratchet.

hex head bolt: Do you have enough access to use a needle nose vice grips?

A picture would help us help you.

Dick

 

[dseely1]

It is an allen head cap screw. I have tries sparays/slovents that are supposed to loosen it up but that does not budge anything. I drilled into the middle of the screw (took 3 bits) and then tried using using a screw extractor and it was catching but then broke off in the screw. This is really being a bitch for me

What exactly do you mean by an "imperial allen wrench"? is that something different than a regular allen wrench.? I am at a lose here and have no idea what to do. Please help!!
David

 

[dkreidel]

I did not recommend a screw extractor (EZ-out) for exactly the reason you discovered - they often break, especially when the bolt or screw is frozen. An imperial allen wrench is one in inch sizes, not metric. Often you can jam (hammer) an inch size wrench into a stripped out metric head. The is probably isn't an option now that you have a broken EZ out in the cap screw. the only thing I can suggest is continue to drill the head off the cap screw - hopefully the screw extractor won't impede your progress. Perhaps others on this forum have better ideas.

Dick

 

[reflectedstatic]

Now that you've broken the extractor off in there, your options are limited. Grind or file down the broken stump of the extractor, center punch it, then begin drilling it out. Once you have it out, you can go back to drilling out the screw. Same as dkreidel said.

When you're drilling stuck screws, use left hand drill bits. It costs a few bucks to buy a set, but (in my experience) it does help pop them loose sometimes. I'd suggest picking a few up in appropriate sizes before taking on that screw extractor, since the thing is made of hardened steel, and it's going to be difficult to drill, so you want to give it every chance to come loose without having to actually chip the whole thing out of there.

In the future, you might pick up an impact driver for that sort of job. Enough experience with allen-head cap screws will tell you when you stand a chance to strip the head, and that's when to hit them with the impact driver.

 

[Baltobonneville]

Can you get long-nose vise-grips on it? And try a lubricant made for the purpose, along with a lot of tapping or other vibration to get the lubricant into the threads.

This is why I put anti-seize on most of my bolts, instead of loctite.

After the requisite dose of foul language, you'll get it out of there. But if you start losing patience, dump some more penetrant on it and walk away for a while. It always helps to take a break and re-evaluate the situation.

Another option if you can get into the cap head socket might be to whack a torx bit into it, instead of another hex bit.

 

[dkreidel]

Can you get long-nose vise-grips on it?.

Another option if you can get into the cap head socket might be to whack a torx bit into it, instead of another hex bit.

Both of these are excellent ideas, and ones I'd try first before proceeding to drill the broken EZ-out.

Dick

 

[dseely1]

Thanks guys! I am heading back out there to work on. Will keep you posted on progress.
David

 

[dseely1]

Thanks for all the advice guys. I finally realized that my biggest problem wasn't that the screw had stripped....but that it was where I could not get anything in there to work on it. It was surrounded on three sides by metal since it was where the old foot peg came off. So first of all I cut the surrounding three sides of metal off and then grinded it all down so that I had full access to the head of the stripped bolt. I bought a set of Irwin bolt extractors. They fit nicely over the head and as you ratchet counter clockwise to loosen they actually grip the head. I first heated all of the surrounding metal so that it would expand. Then used the extractor and the bolt came right out. The left side gave me no problems at all.

Thanks to everyone who responded. I cannot tell you guys how valuable this site is to us newborn garage mechanics. You guys (and gals) on here are all great. Thanks again!
David