| Author | Message | ||
     Limelight |
Ok. So "racing" a kid in his car at 100, really just playing with him and all of a sudden feels like the road surface changed and the bike sounded rougher. Pulled over and looked around, everything looked fine. Next day go to gig and on way home at stop like sounds like something is falling off bike. It was, both rear exhaust mount bolts snapped, front one gone, and header loose. Get her home after 65 mile ride of waiting for exhaust to fall off and kill me. Broken rear exhaust stud. No biggie. Get buddy to trailer bike to his shop, put on stand, drill out back bolts with "Grip Its" in less than 20 mins. YAY! Better than easy outs, get a set! Move to front, rotate engine, can't get good angle on rear top exhaust stud. Engine is rotated till it is hitting swing arm. Didn't realize till later if I had removed rear spring and shock I could have got to it but no biggie. Better I went to the next step. Start the drop engine process, get to swing arm bolt, and man did that thing come out easy. Well, half of it. Swing arm bolt had snapped in half and other half is in the engine. Can't get the swing arm off, everything on hold. Grab an easy out, fits perfectly into hollow swing arm bolt half I have out. Yay, I'll just easy out the hollow swing arm bolt with an extension. Nope, easy out head matches none of my buddys entire MC shop set of tools either ASE or Metric sockets. At this point its 6 in the morning, Harbor Freight around the corner and I remember seeing a set of "pipe nipple extractors". They look like a wide set of easy outs with the heads cut short. The closest size is a hair too small and just falls right in bolt piece I got. Fail. Go through my tools and find 2 old easy outs. Large one fits swing arm bolt AND fits a 3/8ths socket. I'm waiting on replacement swing arm bolt to get here before I go back to his shop and finish up. If this easy out doesnt work, or feels like its going to snap my next idea: Tap the swing arm bolt, get a long bolt, cover it in locktite, screw it in and let it set and hope it holds when I try to back it out. Wish I could find a cheap set of left handed taps and then I would just tap it, use bolt with nut and back it right out. Any ideas?  | ||
| Greg_e |
You could try drilling the stub off until you get to the threaded part, then the swingarm should pull free so you can get in to work on it better. Worth a thought especially since you can measure the diameter you need from the broken piece. Can you sneak a small torch down in there to heat things up, been a while since I looked at this so I can't remember. Might help an extractor do the job. And better to find this now than on the road, on the road could result in a crash if the break allowed half of it to back out. | ||
| Limelight |
Thanks but no stub, 2 more inches of hollow shaft till you get to the solid metal which is over half an inch thick and then down to the actual threaded bolt part. On the up side I just took the half I have out, put it in some vice grips and tried the extractor on it. Dug in down to the solid shaft of the easy out and torqued it as hard as I could. It didnt break even while a little crooked so I'm feeling pretty good about trying it. Also instead of loctite may try jb weld on the bolt and swing arm bolt shaft after I tap it to solidify the bolt to the swing arm bolt shaft.... If I had a left handed drill bit as big as this shat I might have tried that but my 6 dollar kit from harbor freight doesnt go this big. | ||
| Limelight |
Also once the bolt is jb welded in I'll be able to torch the bolt which will travel down to the swing arm bolt. | ||
| Greg_e |
Have you sprayed the hell out of it with penetrating oil? The only risk here is the fire you will create when you torch it. if possible heat the case to expand it, but not sure if it will expand faster than the alloy in the axle bolt thing. If you could get in there you might be able to grind a slot and hit it with an impact driver (the kind you hit with a hammer). the impact should help break the bond between threads and case. I still have a feeling this is going to involve a giant drill bit and drilling down to the threads so you can get the swing arm out of the way. | ||
| Limelight |
http://www.buellxb.com/Buell-XB-Forum/Buell-Lightn ing-XB12S-XB12Ss-CityX-XB12Scg/Troubleshooting/swi ng-arm-removal Here is a pic of one with the threads snapped off. As you can see there is no tool in existance that could get down in there and grind a slot. Drilling down would take hours and hours of drilling and to drill the bolt off far enough for the swing arm to come off and not hit the threads would be a miracle. Not to mention a left handed drill bit that big would cost a wad. I've got a good feeling about the easy out and if it feels iffy I'm going to tap it and use a bolt with red loctice or loctite brand "jb weld" to sieze the threads of the "removal bolt" to the new tapped threads of the swing arm bolt. I removed and reinstalled the swing arm bolt myself less 12,000 miles ago (3 months) when I removed the swing arm to replace the fuel pump so I'm pretty it's not seized in the engine casing. | ||
| Ducbsa |
I had a little job the other day where I had made a shallow counterbore in the head of the screw I needed to get out. My selection of broken (!) easy outs were either too big or too small. So I carefully shortened the one that was a little too small and was able to get a bite in the counterbore. I can't tell if shortening what you have would help you, but it might work. | ||
| Reepicheep |
I wouldn't confuse things with the JB Weld. If the easy out will grip, it will grip. If it won't, JB Weld won't help you. If you heat everything, the "hole" will always expand faster than the "thing in the hole". I had a big argument about this in high school physics class with my teacher and lost, so the lesson stuck with me. So heat is absolutely your friend. | ||
| Reepicheep |
OK, somebody baited me into some math via email... since I typed it up I figured I'd post it just for entertainment. Why do bolt holes grow faster than bolts when you heat them? ============================= Here is how I finally wrapped my head around the "holes grow faster than bolts" thing. I don't know that it is completely right, but it lets me sleep nights. My physics teacher didn't have the energy to work it out with me, she just pointed me at the chapter in the book that said it was so. Which pretty much meant I couldn't rest until I figured it out on my own... Start with a 50mm length of aluminum wire. When heated from 60F degrees ambient to 200F degrees, it will go from 50mm long to 50.0978mm long. Easy and obvious. Now turn that 50mm length of straight aluminum wire into a joined circle, both cold and hot. Nothing changes, right? So using Pi, a 50mm wire will make a 15.9155mm diameter cold circle. Hot, it is a 50.0978mm wire that makes a 15.9465mm diameter hot circle. Still easy and obvious. Now take just a circle of aluminum plate (no hole in it). Pick one that fits exactly in our cold loop we made above (50mm circumference). Mumble-pi-d-solve, that would still be 15.9155mm in diameter. Still easy and obvious. But now heat the plate. The plate expands based on the diameter of the circle, not it's circumference, because, duh, its a plate. Apply the coefficient of expansion to that 15.9155mm diameter and it grows to a 15.9466mm diameter. Now calculate the circumference of that expanded diameter disk (not the loop). You end up with a circumference of 50.09772mm. So when we heated a loop, it grew to 50.0978mm in circumference. But when we heated a disc, it grew only to 50.09772mm circumference. not a lot to look at, but miles when trying to get two pieces of metal apart. So loops grow faster than plates. And when you put a hole in the middle of something, it ceases to act like a plate, and it starts acting like a loop. A plate will expand linearly in all directions based on the width of the plate. But a loop will expand based on the circumference. There is probably some calculus I will never understand that will let you derive "how loopy" your plate becomes once you put a hole in it. I have peace not knowing it.  Like I said, a bit sketchy, but good enough of a proof that I can keep the potential logical contradiction mostly caged in a restless little corner of my mind when I hear the "plop" of those previously stuck tighter than snot crank bearings just *drop* out of the cases after they have sat in the oven for 15 minutes at 250 degrees... | ||
| Reepicheep |
Ok, the analysis above is rounding error. So I'll stick with "aluminum grows faster than steel" and leave it at that. Sigh.  | ||
| Ericz |
You could always remove the primary cover and heat the back side of the engine case where the threaded hole is for the swingarm pivot. Since the aluminum will expand more than the steel, it may make it easier on the easy out. | ||
| Akbuell |
Reep: Actually, both posts make sense to me, anyway. Thanks. And nothing less satisfying than the "plop" of the crankshaft main bearing on your BSA 441 Victor hitting the workbench when you laid the room temp crankcase half down on the bench. Did cause me to cancel my plans for a Westlake 500 kit. And Loctite stud and bearing mount is your friend .... . | ||
| Reepicheep |
Still hunting the truth... Found a math geek that had posted a reference to a puzzle and am corresponding with him. I think the original analysis was close, what I missed is that there is an inevitable gap between the bolt outer diameter and the hole inner diameter. All three grow, the hole, the gap, and the bolt. So the gap does grow. I'm in a boring meeting right now, so I'll grind through some math for fun and see how it works. | ||
| Reepicheep |
Cool! It is the gap. Think of it this way. Draw two circles, one just inside the other with a very small gap, on the surface of a balloon. Blow up the balloon. Note that the outer ring is now bigger, the inner ring is now bigger, and (most importantly) the gap between the two is also now bigger. Here is the real math if you care... Givens: 6.00000 mm steel bolt shaft at 60 deg F (15.6 deg C) 6.05000 mm hole in steel plate at 60 deg F (15.6 deg C) .05 mm gap between bolt and hole. Coefficient of linear expansion for steel is .000016 mm for every degree C. Calculate new width at 300 deg F (148.9 deg C): 6mm shaft now 6.0127968mm 6.05mm hole is now 6.0629034mm Subtract the latter from the former, and the gap is now: .05010664 So the gap grew by .0001mm as a result of the temperature increase. (Message edited by reepicheep on October 03, 2012) (Message edited by reepicheep on October 03, 2012) | ||
| Sifo |
All I know is that if you apply heat, things loosen up.  | ||
| Reepicheep |
Oh, and sorry for the thread hijack Limelight! How is the extraction going? Did you try a 1/4 inch drive with a 16 point socket or box end wrench? I've had success using those with taps and easy outs before. | ||
| Limelight |
Yeah, you sure did hijack with a load of info that really had nothing to do with my issue. I grew up working on tractors and big rigs, know all about heating bolts. What all you guys left out was heating a bolt, and then hitting it with an inverted can of compressed air to quickly cool the bolt while the surrounding area is still hot or visa versa depending on situation. Not yet. Waiting on my replacement swing arm bolt to get here from buellster parts before I drive 65 miles to buddies shop. You can't get a box end wrench in the hole. Or any wrench for that matter. As stated in original post: A socket on an extension was my first idea on the easy out but my buddies set would not fit a single one of his entire shop of snap on brand ASE or Metric sockets. It was by pure chance my easy out fits a 3/8th 16 point socket. Buddy has 1/2 inch set I'll be using. Replacement swing arm bolt gets here tomorrow. Receive bolt, stop by honda shop to pick up parts for buddy, go to gig and run sound for 7 hours, drive to buddies shop at 4AM, attempt to remove old bolt, drive to next gig at 7am and work all day till dark, back to shop, drill out exhaust stud, pass out for few hours, then back to 12 hour outside gig. I'll take some pics and let you guys know as soon as I get a chance. | ||
| Djohnk |
I learned the heating trick when the steel bearing almost fell out of my aluminum rear rim when I heated it with my girlfriends hair dryer (she wasn't around to complain). Before I used the heat trick the bearing wouldn't budge with over a 100 hard whacks from a blind bearing puller. | ||
| Diablobrian |
After heating the two parts with the torch or even an old electric heating element we had around, dry ice applied to the bolt works even better for shocking the things apart. learned that one on a farm as a boy. No, we didn't usually keep dry ice on hand but when working on the treads of a d9 cat having some on hand made sense and that trip to town shortened the work day significantly (Message edited by Diablobrian on October 11, 2012) |
