I need to drill out two locking wheel nuts on my car where they've been gunned up so hard by the plank in the tyre fitters that they're damaged and can't be removed.
At vast expense I bought a cobalt drill bit yet with plenty of lubricant and cooling it's making very little progress and now seems blunt.
Does anybody have any other ideas how to drill this out?
TIA
Andy R
Knock them round with a cold chisel and a hammer, rather than drilling them out.
Can't you go back to Messrs Plank and Co and tell them its their problem?
David
Drilling out is always a last resort for me, especially on bigger nuts/bolts. For something like this, welding on a socket or a piece of steel is by far the easiest option, as long as you have enough clearance to do it.
Yep, cold chisel is what I've use on a few cars when the key has gone walkies, you dont need to turn them that much with the chiseling before they become hand loose
Take it back to whoever caused the problem?
Best to take it to a tyre place - they're used to this sort of thing.
On steel or alloy wheels?
On steel you would probably have room to grind some new flats on the bolts and use an undersize socket.
Also try a non-standard (e.g. Whitworth) socket that is just slightly undersize and may hammer onto the nuts as they are.
On top of that, you want to be using really good quality sockets that won't split, and ideally an impact wrench which is far more able to get a stuck bolt moving that just sheer muscle-powred torque.
Are you certain a 6 sided rather than a 12 sided socket will get no grip? What about a wall-drive socket?
Drilling large holes in steel without a drill-press - tough.
If the above don't work, then it's a job I would hand over to garage that's had some experience in dealing with before.
Tks for the ideas but the bolt is too deep inside the alloy wheels to get at either with a cold chisel or welder.
Rgds
Andy R
and they will use a chisel !! :-)
I've used chisels successfuly, but usually on damaged nuts/bolts when they're not torqued down really hard.
I'd have expected the chisel to just cut rather than turn the bolt head on a highly torqued bolt, and even swapping to a drift, the contact area is too small compared to the torque used to round off all 6 corners on a large bolt in the first place.
I'm not saying it won't work, but I've nearly always been able to use other approaches (sawing, grinding, nut-splitters etc) around large fasteners - but the risk is removing yet more metal further rounding off the head.
I had this problem on a deep-seated alloy wheel nut, and two tyre-fitting places couldn't (or wouldn't) help, so I bought an Irwin "Bolt-Grip" socket set and this shifted it easily. I have seen similar sockets in Halfords too, but not Irwin.
CRB
I had this problem on a deep-seated alloy wheel nut, and two tyre-fitting places couldn't (or wouldn't) help, so I bought an Irwin "Bolt-Grip" socket set and this shifted it easily. I have seen similar sockets in Halfords too, but not Irwin.
CRB
How are they damaged (are the threads damaged)? Why can't they be removed? An air gun will work just as well in reverse.
Sylvain.
The head of the bolt is round and flat like a coin and there are four small indents in the circumference, a bit like a biscuit would look like if you took four small bites out of the edge of it. The 'key' is a circular cup with a nut attached to the bottom which fits over the 'coin' and has four internal protrusions which match the 'bites'. The coin shaped head itself is only about 4mm thick and where it has been overtorqued probably several times then undone this has hammered a slope into the 'bites' such that the cup slides off the head of the bolt. I've had the car parked a foot off the kerb with a 5ft lever jamming the key and socket onto the nut while I tried to turn the torque wrench but it still slips off before the bolt comes undone. Even with an airgun it slips off, I suspect that it's the impact action of air guns that's hammered the slopes into the cutouts in the first place.
Rgds
Andy R
What about gluing the key onto the "coin"? Clean everything really well, epoxy the key onto the coin, allow it to set, then warm everything thoroughly and drench in "Plus Gas". Then hope.
Steel loaded epoxy would be even stronger. But unlikely as it sounds, I have removed some pretty big and tight nuts with a dinky little chisels. I have one about the size of a centre punch. The last 30 mm or so isn't conical, it has four tapering flats. Then instead of a conical point on the end, it's truncated with another flat at 45 degrees across the diagonal. This gives a diamond shaped "cutting flat" about 2 mm on a side. By using the right orientation, the point digs in and grips. I use a standard 4 lb lump hammer on this and I reckon it's as effective as about 50 kgf-metres. Of course the impact is a lot of it. It probably gives a peak force of a few hundred kgf on the working radius of 10 mm upwards (depending on the nut size).
I fear that the OPs nut is down a tunnel in an alloy wheel, and thus inaccesible....
Hammer on a 'disposable' socket and remove that way, alternatively if it's on a hub you may be able to remove the wheel with the hub attached and work on the bench with it, heat can help. Another trick I have done is to weld a short bolt onto the damaged locking nut and then use a long reach socket to remove the whole thing, if you don't have any clearance to do this and it isn't on a hub you can always attack from the back of the disk. There are also some huffing big stud extractors out there which should do the job as well, ISTR some designed to remove the studs used to hold exhaust manifolds on which were excellent and came with their own drill bit which made very light work of the job. Of course, you could always take it back to the chimps who mucked it up and make it their problem?
I can't think of anything that might do that job. You may have to sacrifice the wheel by drilling around the bolts, and removing the wheel. In future, tell the garage/s not to use impact tools on these bolts.
Sylvain.
I just wanted to make sure he didn't think "cold chisel" meant "bolster"!
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