On Wed, 20 Jan 1999, scott suhring wrote:
> Anyway. All options on how to proceed would
> be much appreciated. BTW, I have never
> used a bolt extractor so any suggestions
> using one of these with a bit more
> explanation would be appreciated.
There are at least two kinds of bolt extractors that I know of. The
first, "Ezee-Out" (or similar name), looks a bit like a tap with *really*
coarse, left-hand thread. The idea with these extractors is that you put
a hole in the stub left behind, offer the extractor up to the hole, and
start "undoing" everything. The extractor winds itself into the
hole-in-the-bolt, (it's tapered), eventually sticks, and all going well,
will proceed to remove the chunk-o-bolt left in the nut. Often they
break off and also tend to be harder than any known drill bit.
The other kind just looks like a piece of square steel (actually square
tempered steel). As before, you drill a hole... but instead of winding in
the extractor, it gets bashed in. The square has sharp edges that are
supposed to "bite" the metal and allow you to remove the broken bolt.
I've had the most luck with heat and patience. (LOTS of patience). If
you can get the broken bit RED hot, do so. If you can't, try to get a bit
of heat on it; will do wonders for stuck things. Then you can use a punch
to winnow the broken bit out, always hitting it in such a way that it
"unwinds", until you can get vise-grips on the piece and take it out.
If you can drill out the bolt, that should work too. You might have to
re-tap the hole to get all the chunks out, and if you missed the bolt
center and cut some threads away, heli-coils may be required.
Sometimes you can get bolts out with a screwdriver if you can bash it in
so that it grabs (like the extractors). You usually wreck a whole bunch
of tools this way, but it SOMETIMES works. (get an extractor instead)
hope this helps,
-Malcolm
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