| Author | Message | ||
     Brentmiller |
I went and picked up a coupla header studs today cause I thought I lost one last night. Sure sounds good though. Turns it, it broke off. I have never had much better than about a 50% success rate with easy-outs. I usually end up easy-outing my broken pilot bits before I even get any work done. Does anyone have any additional advice before I get after this good? and as the tattoo on the arm of a guy at the muffler shop reads: "if it ain't the washer, it's the dryer" Thanks and Regards, Brent 2000 M2 | ||
| Rick_a |
I believe carefully drilling it out is the only 100% method. Jims makes a jig for this, IF you can get a drill in there in the first place. | ||
| Oldog |
What Rick said, rent a right angle drill if needed, the jims jig will allow a start on center and guide the bit down the stud hole if used properly, good luck | ||
| Brentmiller |
It's the upper of the rear pipe; easiest one of the bunch. I think I can get a good run at it. I'll let you know. Brent | ||
| Jlnance |
Don't bother with ez-outs. If they break off in the hole, as they are prone to do, you're doubley screwed. Drill it out and helicoil it. I've done it once. It intimidated me, but turned out not being so bad. If you're not using the jims guide. start with a very small hole and keep enlarging it. | ||
| Dano_12s |
Brent, if you have access to a welder[mig]I have had good luck putting a nut over the stud+welding them then remove.Good luck+be sure you have the modified exhaust hanger. | ||
| Reepicheep |
I agree with everything posted here. I *did* try it with the easy out. It was a freaking disaster. The Jims tool is only about $75 and it just works. If you use it, you might not even need the heli coil, it will drill so well you could use a pick to dig out the old threads. | ||
| Jeffb |
I have used the "weld a nut to it" method on other broken bolts in the past and it works great. The heat from welding heats up the aluminum to help free up the bolt and if there is any Loctite on it, it will burn out too. Jeff | ||
| Brentmiller |
Is this stud failure due to the fact that the NLA exhaust hanger bushing is wore smooth the hell out? I do have a wire welder and use it well enough and I just might try it instead of spending $75 on a drill jig. I'm gonna need that for the updated hanger it sounds like. The only hangup might be the fact that the stud broke right flush to the mani. I'd have to tack another, smaller hardened bolt onto it as there isn't enough stock exposed to get a good run at it. Thanks for the help, Brent | ||
| Johnnymceldoo |
Havnt been in this situation yet but if I was I would get the motor hot before I started. | ||
| Kootenay |
Find your local "Lawson Products" rep--he can supply very tough, high-quality drill bits which don't break easily, and they're available in reverse twist just for this purpose (I've seen some broken bolts come out when the reverse twist drill bit catches as it breaks through the bottom of the bolt). He can also supply really good quality easy-outs, in several styles. http://www.lawsonproducts.com/ | ||
| Paw |
Heres what i did. I took a dremmel cut off wheel cut the broken stud off, then ground it flat. then i went up to the next size drill and tap. Then i open the hole in my exhaust clamp. Use my method and go one size up. It works perfect and there is plenty of room to do it. And chances are with a bigger stud it won't brake like the smaller ones do. Just remember when tapping turn your tap wrench a half turn then back it off a half turn to break the chip. If you don't you risk breaking a tap. Then you will need a tap extractor which is still better than trying to drill an easyout. Helicoils suck I have been a machinist for 21 years and if at all possible it is always better to go up to the next size and in this case it is possible. It worked great for me. (Message edited by paw on March 04, 2007) | ||
| Rocketman |
I wouldn't rule out an Easy Out providing it were a Snap-on one. They are very very strong and would take an idiot to break one. The secret is, warm up the area around the broken stud whilst using the Easy Out. The Jims tool is good. I've used it, but you have to locate it spot on. Rocket | ||
| Danny_h__jesternut |
When this has happened to me in the past, I jest take the head to a pro. The local shop charges me $60. Its so easy, jest drop it off and a few days later its done profeshionaly.No head akes, no cursing/swearin. | ||
| Reepicheep |
What does snap on do to solve the two problems with easy outs... the first being that the thing has to wedge itself into the broken stud to grip (thus expanding the stud and making your problem worse) and the second being that the easy out has to have a significantly smaller cross sectional area then the stud it is trying to remove. | ||
| Rocketman |
Bill, if it were not for a Snap-on Easy Out I would never have removed the broken stud from my head.  What does snap on do to solve the two problems with easy outs... the first being that the thing has to wedge itself into the broken stud to grip (thus expanding the stud and making your problem worse) That's a misconception on two counts. First the Easy Out does not wedge itself into the broken stud, and second, it doesn't expand it either. It simply cuts into the sidewall of the hole drilled into the stud. You just confused how an Easy Out works because of its conical shape. and the second being that the easy out has to have a significantly smaller cross sectional area then the stud it is trying to remove. To start with a Snap-on branded Easy Out is a top quality steel, which is why I use, and recommended them. Note from the above pic the round section in the centre of the Easy Out. I believe that is there to address your question. If an Easy Out used correctly can't get a broken stud out then no other tool will either, then it's down to drills and taps. But whatever shortcomings you see an Easy Out as having, I certainly wouldn't rule the use of a quality one out. Yes, cheap branded ones will break too easily. That was my original point Bill. Rocket (Message edited by rocketman on March 04, 2007) | ||
| Johnc |
In my 30 years in the automotive trade and hundreds of broken studs/bolts removed, I can say I agree with not using an easy out. They sometimes work ok but if one breaks off in the hole you will have a big problem. I agree with Dano and Jeff, if you have access to a MIG welder this is the best method. Use a pair of vise grips and hold a nut (about the same size as the broken stud or 1 size larger, 3/8" in this case would be my suggestion) over the exposed end of the stud. Set the heat and wire speed fairly high and start the arc with the wire touching the stud and use a circular motion to fill the nut. Don't worry about the aluminum, the weld will not stick to it even if the stud is broken off flush with the head surace or even silghtly below flush. After the nut has cooled enough for the glow to go away use try turning it. The nut may twist off a couple of times (if the original end surface of the stud was not perfectly clean the weld will be contaminated). If that happens just start again with a new nut, the heat of welding will burn off any contaminants. It may take a few tries but the heat from the weld will melt the loctite and the stud WILL come out. This method works every time and requires no drilling. Good luck!!! | ||
| Brentmiller |
Well hell yeah I broke it. I couldn't really get at it with my welder so I went nice and slow and heated and turned slowly and checked it and heated and turned slowly and checked it and heated and turned slowly and checked it and heated and turned slowly and checked it and heated and turned slowly and checked it and heated and turned slowly and checked it and heated and turned slowly and checked it and heated and turned slowly and checked it and heated and turned slowly and checked it and heated and turned slowly and checked it and it snapped. Just makes it more interesting. I'll get it done. It's too nice out to ride that damn '67 BMW so it's top of the list. Damnit, Brent 2000 M2 Little Rock, AR | ||
| Swampy |
I have a friend that exclusivly uses an arc welder to weld nuts to the remnants, and it works every time. Good luck! | ||
| Mr_grumpy |
I used an easyout on my '99 M2 Upper rear as well, came out ok, what can I say, exactly the same problem, but it worked for me. I have to say I like the weld a nut on idea, Another solution I've used for similar problems is to drill as far as possible down the stud then grind the corners off an allen key thats just too big to go in the hole, to give it a start, then hammer it in, it's a last resort measure I admit. As they say on the tv don't try this at home these people are experts. I hate helicoils too, never had one stay in, always had to replace them every time, the bolt or whatever came out. Mind you they've enabled me too "out" the odd vehicle in some sort of running order, a time or two. | ||
| Brentmiller |
Son of a bitch! What are my options now? The damn thing is ground down smooth but I can't get a good enough ground in there to weld a nut onto it. I tried but it's just too tight to get to and I'd rather not jab at it without a good shot. If I take it to the local Harley dudes, what are they gonna have to do? It's a 4200 mile rig so I'm trying not to knacker the damn thing. TIA, Brent | ||
| Johnnymceldoo |
Buy yourself a left hand drill just small enough that it wont ruin your internal threads on the head. Before drilling use a small tap with a point as a center punch to get a good center. Make sure you decently centered on the bolt. You could also use center punch but I like using the pointed ends of taps sometimes because they arent as bulky as center punches and I can see my work better. Dont get carried away with the hammer. Taps are brittle. You might start your bike up and get the heads hot before you start drilling. | ||
| Swampy |
Try welding a larger nut to the stud again, the steel won't stick to the aluminum. Then drill it out if it doesn't work. | ||
| Oldog |
1. the ez out is in the hole? 2. a drill bit is in the hole? 3. weld a 5/16 in nut on it ground to the motor mount ground strap for the weld. 4. its all ready screwed up short of destroying the head you cant hurt it smooth and clean the area around the stud weld the nut on and when cool twist it out. bbq grill paint will hide it for a while, the easy out is going to require small pointed stones and carbide rotary files to get out er and lots of time and patience. | ||
| Reepicheep |
I feel your pain. On the upside, I was right where you were at about 10 am on a saturday, sitting there with a stupid look and a broken easy out. By 1 am sunday I had a solved problem. Here is what I did... I took a diamond tipped dremel bit, and used that to "carve out" the easy out bit. It was cut a little, chip and break a little (with a punch), carve a little. Very slow and very tedious work. In hindsight, I don't know that I should have used the punch, but I was hoping that it would just break up and come out easier without so much cutting. It did, but also drove bits deeper. It worked out, but I don't know if I would do it again that way. All I had access to were cheap diamond coated dremel bits. I went through three of them, and probably should have gone through 6 or 9 of them. Using them as a drill, there is just not that much cutting surface. There may be other bits (carbide? stone?) that would have worked better and held up longer, but it was a saturday, and I was being stubborn and wanted it fixed that day, so I was limited to what my local home store had on the shelves. OldDog... can you shed any more light on the small pointed stones bits? If you could use those to remove the bulk of the material, then just use the diamond tipped dremel bit to do the last deeper part, that could save a lot of time and money. The other solution is to just pull the head and have a machine shop do ESD (electronic machining... Electro Static Discharge maybe?), they can pull the whole mess right out. | ||
| Al_lighton |
These really do work: http://www.americansportbike.com/shop/cgi-bin/cp-a pp.cgi?usr=51F4004380&rnd=1130667&rrc=N&affl=&cip= 69.160.135.44&act=&aff=&pg=prod&ref=16029&cat=&cat str= But only if used BEFORE breaking an Easy-out off in the stud....DOHHH!!!! Al (Message edited by al_lighton on March 07, 2007) | ||
| Oldog |
rotary stone pointed, not likely any cheaper than the diamond point you are describing, the carbide file is an industrial item and may not be available in that small of a size. Electrical Discharge Machining you can cut hardened material with an electrode most plastic molds are made that way, variations also use wire to cut ( as the electrode ) EDM will BURN the part out think of it as reverse welding. the item to be edm-ed must be conductive, it is immersed in a dialectric / coolant and an electrical current passes from the cutting tool to the work piece small amounts of metal are removed and are picked up by the liquid the dialectric liquid is circulated and filtered There is a smaller simpler tool called a tap disentegrator, I have seen only one so I have no idea of how common they are. I would try the rotary tool / diamond route 1st The EDM route will not be cheap. You want to clean up the head as good as possible ( discuss with the shop doing the work BEFORE starting ) if you decide to go that route. Good Luck I feel your pain on this... | ||
| Brentmiller |
Yeah, the easy out is in there but I've tapped it enough trying to get it good and flat that it's hard to tell where it is any more. I'm gonna pick up some stone-tipped bits for the dremmel tonight and pick at it some more. I really have no choice. Trailering it somewhere is not in my vocab. Yet. Thanks for the help, Brent | ||
| Paw |
Dude, nothing has worked for you yet. Try my idea it works great. i had one break on me. I ground it flat. Drilled it out to the next size Tap drill. tapped it carefully then took the next size drill and opened up the hole on the exhaust clamp. There is plenty of room in the wall of the cylinder head for the next size tap. The benefit are, it probably will not break again. This is what i did for a stud and nut. I went to my local ace hardware store bought a stainless steel bolt 1 1/2 long cut it to the size stud i needed and a lock nut so it will not vibrate loose. Cost me all of $2 and about an hour or so of my time. Reason i did it this way, helicoils suck you have to drill to the next size any way why not just tap that hole and use a bigger and stronger stud? No brainer if you ask me. (Message edited by paw on March 07, 2007) | ||
| Johnnymceldoo |
I dont think you'll be drilling out an easy out. I could be wrong but that easy out should be just as hard as a drill. Maybe some are only surface hardened? Youve got nothing to lose in trying to drill it but broken drills. Id say most machine shops could plunge it out with a good carbide end mill if you hand them the head. EDM shouldnt be necessary unless the EZ out is too hard to cut. | ||
| Oldog |
John: In times past before solid carbide endmills were common EDM was considered the best way to salvage the part with a tap or easy out in it if you needed it quickly. I have been told that IF you can wait for the part and the hole is blind you can cover the offending tool with Coke and add fresh to it daily for a while the soda corodes it enough to allow an extraction, think weeks here and I have never tried it. As I understand it EZouts are hard like taps and only slightly less brittle If I were in Brent's place I would proceede in the fashion that he is for now and if a carbide mill will cut it would a carbide drill (stubby) cut it ? or would it shatter? | ||
| Paw |
You should have no problems using a solid carbide drill if done properly with plenty of cutting lubricant. The drill is not cheap so best thing to do it take the head off and have it done by a shop. Damn i guess a machinist doesn't know what he was taking about.  Should have gone my route the first time and this headache probably would never have happened. Hang in there you'll have the Buell up and running in no time. (Message edited by paw on March 08, 2007) | ||
| Brentmiller |
At this point, its hilarious and totally embarrassing but, for those told ya sos that want an update, get this: I got Jim's guide and a couple of carbide bits and a ton of diamond dremmel bits and got through it after about three hours. Got my tap out, didn't have a tap wrench that would fit in the work area, so I ran all over town on Saturday and ran one down and starting tapping. I was grinning ear to ear things were going so well then, as typical of this experience I broke the tap in as well. I laughed, bought a(nother) six pack, sat in the sun and stared at it. I got my mind right, tried like hell to get it out and finally resorted today to hauling it out to my machinist buddy's shop. We got after it and after about three hours and two end mill bits, we got through it again. We started tapping and hung up on some crap. That crap was the end of the original EZ out. It was way off target. Obviously, the only option at this point is to Heli-Coil it so I'm looking to find out if there's room for the half inch insert. It's the smallest I can source for the 5/16 thread. And can I use the simple insert or do I HAVE to have the more sophisticated one with the prongs? What have you other unlucky sots used? BTW, it's been nine days now. Don't laugh. My wife's not laughing about the nursery not being finished yet. Thanks for the input, Brent | ||
| Reepicheep |
Better then to laugh then cry... I remember re-tapping mine. The pucker factor was through the freaking roof. 6 years after the fact, that pain of that whole process is still very fresh in my mind! Makes me laugh now though... a good "one of those days" story. When I put mine back in, I did not heli-coil it. I just drilled the hole down with a smaller bit (after pecking out the old easy out). It was off by about half the thickness of the drill bit by the time I was deep enough for the new stud, so you could see like a half moon of the old steel stud and the aluminum head at the bottom of the hole. A Mechanical Engineer friend of mine talked me out of the heli coil. Not because it was "bad", just because it was unnecessary, and one more thing to go wrong. We just tapped the "new" hole out to the right size. So it was tapping half aluminum and half old steel stud by the time it was at the bottom. The first few threads did not anchor well (as the old bolt came out completely) but the next 20 or so did. In theory a pretty ugly kludge, but when you get right down to it, a fairly solid fix. The old stud was holding the aluminum head. The new stud was holding aluminum on one side, the old steel stud on the other, which was holding the original aluminum. It looked better then it sounds. The tap lined up with the old threads and "synchronized" them with the new threads being cut. I would not have anchored a cylinder head this way, nor done this by choice, but it worked great for another 20k plus miles and was still totally solid when I sold the bike. My logic was that no matter how badly it went, I could get a new head direct from the factory for $300 or something. Not cheap, but not a disaster either. I paid almost that much for just the part for the rear O2 sensor on my Toyota minivan.  How did the carbide bits work relative to the diamond tipped bits? Would you recommend one over the other? | ||
| Reepicheep |
Oh, and Paw, just for a future data point for others with the problem... if somebody came to you, head in hand, and says "extract this old bolt", about how much cash are they looking at for quality work? And how much different is the price between just the head with a broken stud, and the head with a broken stud and an easy out wedged into it? That'd be really helpful data for future reference. Though I still suspect the best way is probably just go use the $80 Jims tool and forgo the easy out entirely. That is pretty much a guaranteed solution for $80, and depending on which stud it is there is a decent chance you could do it all without pulling the head. If it happened to me today, I would be tempted to build my own Jims tool from some parts from my local Harley dealer. But that's just my own poor judgement  Rocket's Snap On Easy Out Tool has at least one recommendation as well and might be worth considering. | ||
| Oldog |
Reepi: the exhaust clamp would serve and If you got a drill guide bushing from Carr Lane components and fitted it to the collar you could do it. thats basicaly what the Jims' tool is you could also use a small piece of aluminum plate and lay out the holes. Of course you would want to drill the holes on a drill press and get them dead square to the plate, fit a drill guide bushing to one of the holes and shape it like an exhaust clamp. Carbide is nearly as hard as diamond and like diamond its brittle. typical diamond tools are diamond chips bonded to a steel shank where carbide tools that size are typicaly solid IMO diamond tools will take more abuse carbide will cut better as typicaly diamond tools are abrasive types. where the carbide tools are edged tools carbide will cut hard steel and will hold an edge when red hot. any gaps in the part like breaking out of the tip of an ezout tend to break them. | ||
| Rocketman |
Cheaper still, just buy a new head and be done with the whole mess. Bare heads are not that expensive. Rocket | ||
| Brentmiller |
Got the tap out (with a Jim's guide) and re-tapped the hole. Good to go now but after 20 miles I'm losing nuts. I'm gonna pull it all off tonight and re-assemble it. What's the order of operations advice? Loosely from the front head, down, from the rear head, down...again and again? Oh, yeah, the dealership convinced the me the flat exhaust gaskets were better than the tapered ones. I'm having a feeling that's not the case. Thoughts? Good talk, Brent |
