Shooting my bolt

So, yes, about this sheared bolt.

Oh, before I start, I passed my Mod 1 test today. Thanks www.biketrainwales.co.uk. Mod 2 next week.

Anyway, the sheared bolt. Here it is with a lovely cup of tea, my most important tool:

It was royally embedded and I had been liberally applying WD40 on a daily basis but with no discernable result. Having read numerous websites I decided to try drilling it out, in the hope that the bolt would miraculously float off the threads. Well, I punched the centre then set up the bench press with my drill in it (thanks F-in-L) and clamped the frame down good and proper. You'll see I hadn't yet tidied the garage:

I successfully popped a hole through the bolt. Nothing happened. So I tried hammering a Torx bit in and turning that with a spanner. Nothing happened. Well, it stripped a bit more metal out. So I kept drilling with larger bits until it seemed like most of the bolt was gone. I may have left it overnight soaked in WD40. Nothing happened. Then I sparked up the Dremel

That Dremel bit fitted straight through the opposite hole, so I kept going and poking with an old dentist's pokey thing.  A tiny bit of thread came loose (see above) nothing much else happened until the Dremel bit broke off. Damn that bolt's a tough sucker.

Reading more internet sites, I bought a screw extractor kit. But I didn't have a suitable handle and I think I'd drilled out too much already. I kept tentatively enlarging the hole with a Dremel grinding bit. A teeny-tiny piece of thread came off that cheered me up no end. I left it for another night with the WD40 treatment and thought hard.

My next thought was to re-cut the thread. I reckoned that if I ground enough away I could use my freshly purchased tap-and-die set to clear out the remainder. So the process was: grind a bit with Dremel, try a tap. Grind a bit, try the tap. To be honest, I thought I'd messed it all up but I should have more faith, eventually I got purchase and the damn thing worked. It felt the same as catching my first fish:

Finally the tap broke through and bit into the metal. To say I was pleased would be a huge understatement. I tried the thread with another bolt and it held. So I greased up the existing stud and checked it fitted. It did, here it is with the persistent bit of bolt thread that has been my nemesis:

What a relief!

All the time I have been leaving the other half of the pannier frame well alone, just spraying it with WD40 (apparently it needs at least 24hrs to work). Flushed with my bolt removing success I gave the bolts on the other pannier rack a turn. They are still pretty stiff. This time I left them. You see? I'm learning!

Lessons I've Learned


Whilst it might have been cheaper and easier to just put a thinner bolt through the hole, the pleasure of sorting out the problem far outweighs the quick solution. I realise that I'm doing this not just to improve the bike but to prove to myself I can solve these problems.

Next up is removing the rear indicators and rear carrier to strip the scabby paint off it. Then onto the painting, which I'm not looking forward to.

The first engagement - the pannier rack

That's not actually true that the panniers were the first thing I did. I did successfully remove a sticker from the windscreen using lighter fluid and an old Nectar card.

Flushed with the success of this, I tried to buff up the pitted wheels. It seemed far too much like hard work with little results, so I resolved to come back to that some other time. Like the winter.

Clearly I needed to dismantle something. That something was to be the pannier rack which looked like it was painted with oil paint or something. There were signs of corrosion and it wasn't pretty:

So I unscrewed everything and began to get the measure of the beast. The underside was caked in hardened muck. The bolts were Heinz 57 varieties and one sheared off with minimal pressure. Fortunately that one was through the rack and mudguard so it slid out.

Eventually I had two halves of the pannier racks in the garage.

Using my trusty drill and a wire brush from Wilkinsons (good old Wilkos) I set about it. Just about nothing happened, which was far from what I was expecting. As luck would have it, I'd also bought some paint stripper, thinking it would come in handy some day. that afternoon, in fact. So the dismantled frame was liberally daubed with the foul paintstripper and left for half an hour.

(It is worth mentioning two things - I kept the bolts in labelled tins and butter tubs, I've since bought a box with dividers for that. Also I left one side well alone to help me put one back together and not to make mistakes on the whole thing).

Half an hour later and the scraper came out and the paint fell away to reveal mainly good metal with a few scabby corroded parts.

I had gently avoided the fixings and rubber bumpers, having seen the toothbrush dissolve before my eyes. Now I plucked up the courage to remove them. The bumpers and end pieces came off easily. The latch and one of the mounting studs came off with a bit of WD40 and elbow grease. The other mounting stud came off in my hand. Oops, I thought it was a bit stiff. More on that later.

I went at it with the drill and wire brush and it was quite time consuming. In the process I did reveal a label that identified the panniers as Nonfango Side racks. Apparently Nonfango went bust and then came back to life again. Current Givi racks look very similar but much flimsier. (Notice sheared bolt to left of label)

A bit more painstaking brushing and the first side was finished. It must have taken about four or five hours in total but the result is really pleasing:

So there we are. All ready to move onto the Hammerite spraying. I've just got to remove that broken bolt...

Lessons learned so far

1. Be patient. If the bolt's not moving, give it some WD40 and come back tomorrow
2. Have something else to do. While I was waiting for the stripper I was having a go at the wheels. Made me much less inclined to hurry it.
3. Tidy your damn garage. I did this last night. today was much better. In the winter it'll be really important.