Ages ago I tried swapping over my front brake rotor for a metalgear piece with fresh pads, because my rotor is warped. Most of them loosened just fine, but when I came to the last one, it rounded out. I tried heating it with my soldering gun and letting it cool to get it loose, but that didn't work. So I tightened the other bolts back up, installed the fresh pads (the last pads, Ferodo, were worn out), and just kept on riding.
The warping has gotten progressively worse and has worn out the Metalgear pads quite quickly, to the point that there is no pads left and only metal. Not good. So I got the tools out again, and have attempted to remove the stripped rotor bolt with zero success.
I have ground, cut, hammered and drilled at this farken thing. I can't get it loose by hammering it with a flat blade screw driver. My drill bits keep on breaking inside the bolt because I am too impatient. I tried cutting a slot into it and cranking it out with vise grips on a flat bladed screwdriver but I just keep on removing material from the buttery bolt head. I tried grinding one half of the head down so that I could get at the other side better with the screwdriver, but that didn't really work. So I am a bit stuck.
I can't really do courier work with no front brake pads. It's only a matter of time before I get pulled over when the police hear, "screech, grind, slide". The front brake still works surprisingly well but with no pads the rotor is very very scored. The rotor and what once had pads on them will be posted onto the 60 Degrees Motorcycles motorcycle workshop wall of shame, as long as I can get them removed!
So I am going to google, "how to remove a stripped rotor bolt" and see if there's anything that I can still do which I haven't already tried. Hopefully I can get all this damn shit off!
I should have googled how to remove a rounded-out brake rotor bolt before attempting to get this sucker out, there is a good guide which describes closing the allen key slot back inwards which then allows you to drive a socket allen key into the bolt and just crank it out as you normally would!
ReplyDeleteWell never mind, that's not really an option after everything I've done.
Today I tried heating the bolt up with a heat gun to soften the loctite and then cooling it down suddenly with some water in a spray bottle to try loosening the bolt. I did several cycles of this but the bolt is still in tight. At least hopefully now the loctite should be well and truly ruined!
The next thing I am trying is putting some JB weld onto the bolt, then I will cut a slot into the bolt and crank it out with a good big flat-head screw driver bit in a bit coupling on a big ratchet. Failing that, I will heat up a socket allen key to red-hot temperature, past what the JB weld can handle, melt it into the JB weld, and just crank the rotor bolt using a ratchet!
Actually - what am I thinking, I should just JB weld a 1/2" or 1/4" drive socket straight onto the rotor bolt! Then I can just crank the bolt out in the morning!
The JB weld and screw driver bit trick did not work. I guess JB weld isn't designed to handle torque, as soon as I tried to twist the screwdriver bit with my vice grips it came straight out of the JB weld.
ReplyDeleteMy ozito rotary tool broke, so I'll be returning it and buying a largeish cobalt drill bit. Once I've drilled the head off the bolt, that should release the tension on the thread of the bolt and it should come out easily with an ezy out.
Thank god I bought that pack of brake rotor bolts from Procycle a while ago!