Stuck bolt broke off
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Uncle Larry (03-24-2018)
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If want to to read the whole story here's a link to the thread;
https://www.hdforums.com/forum/softa...-look-for.html
Here's the part of thread where I had to deal with the broken bolt;
The bitch of everything as expected was the broken shock mount bolt.
It was easy to see that it was next to impossible to get the broken bolt out of the swing arm without taking the swing arm off.
I did some research and by all accounts taking the swing arm off didn't seem to be that difficult so I went for it.
I was able to get the swing arm off in a couple of hours and that was with me taking my time.
Once the swing arm was off I saturated the broken bolt with PB Blaster and let it sit overnight.
BTW, the bolt broke off about an 1/8 of a inch inside the swing arm so I knew I was not going to be able to use a chisel and tap it out.
The next morning I went to Lowes and got an EX-5 easy-out bit/extractor for $7. (EX-5 is what Irwin recommends for a 1/2" bolt)
I started out by drilling a small hole in the broken bolt and then incrementally increased the drill bit size until I got to the size needed for the EX-5 extractor.
During my research of easy-out use was the consistent advice to not be in a hurry and force the drill bits.
If you break off a drill bit, the job just got a lot harder.
I tapped in the extractor and heated up the swing arm mount.
Then SLOWLY started to turn the extractor counterclockwise and to my joy the bolt started to turn out.
A couple of minutes later the bolt was out.
A couple of days later my shock mount bolts arrived.
About 2 hours later the rear end was back together.
Good luck--
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