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Cycleracks install nightmare

2143 Views 8 Replies 6 Participants Last post by  DonBenito
Got my rear Cycleracks rack today and couldn't wait to get it installed.



The right hand allen key bolt (from the top of the passenger footpeg bracket) was a little tight, but it gave in easy enough and backed right out for me.



The left hand allen key bolt though, different story. It turned a cheap allen key into a corkscrew without so much as budging.



I got my nice craftsman allen key set out and I was torqueing it so hard that I thought it would break. Afraid that it might break and slice open my hand, I grabbed it with some vice grips.



The vice grips gave me just enough leverage to completely strip out the hexagon! Allen keys don't work so well in a circular hole.



So, drill and extract it was! Except, the bolt is harder than the Irwin extractor screw I bought at Ace Hardware, so the bolt in turn stripped the threads off of the extractor screw!



I took the cheap extractor back to Ace, and strolled next door to Autozone to buy a harder extractor.



The high carbon extractor had plenty of bite into the relatively soft bolt, and just enough brittleness to snap in half as soon as I put a little muscle into turning it!



So now I have a soft bolt seized up in my left passenger peg bracket with an incredibly hard high-carbon steel extractor tip lodged in the center of it that I have no way of drilling out.





The only thing I can think to do now is ride my TW200 to a local machine shop and let a professional take a crack at it.



If anyone else has a better (read- cheaper!) suggestion I'm open to ideas!
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Before I read to the extractor part, I had you a plan. Now I'd say welding a nut or having the machine shop use one of those crazy laser things on it is your quickest way.



The Dremel way could work as well. I had a case cover strip all the phillips heads one time, so I figured I'd grind them until they were studs, pull the cover, then put vice grips on what was left. I found that the friction heated them up to the point of loosening by hand before I got any of them totally ground. Maybe get yourself a tiny butane torch. Sometimes a Bic lighter, patience, and some penetrating oil gives you that extra push. If a Dremel slot wouldn't work, and you're comfortable with it, grind two sides of the big allen head off so that a wrench or vice grips could grab the outside flat. Those particular screws are large enough that it may work.



There's a lot of ways to approach it so read around the net and get creative if you have to.
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