[Cleared2land]

Every now and then, even solid wrenching experience and high-quality tools fail to remove a firm, determined bolt. Hopefully, the result is only a stripped head and not a broken bolt shaft. Experience lends to knowing when there's enough removal torque being applied to become concerned, stop the attempt and revaluate the situation. I made two good faith attempts to remove a lower shock bolt when I knew any more applied torque would fail and alternative removal measures were going to be needed.

I already had a new replacement bolt and a multitude of bolt extractors, but I have had an idea for a hack for a number of years, but had never had a need to experiment with this technique. With the plan already in place to extract a defiant bolt, I decided I would go for increasing removal torque until it backed out or stripped the head. After applying good standard practices (firm pressure and gently increasing torque), it stripped. Once it started to go, there was no going back. The stripped and removed bolt below.

The hack was to try doubling up some 0.021" Stainless Aircraft Safety Wire and see if it could be placed into the bolt's hex head cavity and have a slightly larger hex head socket drive (8mm to 1/4" hex tool) driven in with a brass hammer to increase the purchase of the hex tool to remove the stubborn stripped bolt.

I bent the safety wire using my needle nose pliers and formed this: (Note...the photo is the replaced bolt because it didn't take a photo before removal attempt. Only shown for wire placement example)

This fitted into the stripped bolt head like this:.

This was a photo of the concept attempt:

Followed by driving the 1/4" inch drive hex socket into the bolt hex head. It worked like a charm. No special tools or extractor required. Below is the actual extracted bolt.

I was a bit amazed at the ease of this hack. It required no special tools and theoretically could be performed in the field provided you could find appropriate wire to complete the task. This took about 30 minutes with some concept wire placements to figure out if this might work. Once I figured out a workable wire placement, it took only a few minutes. Cheers!

 

[KobayashiMaru]

I will remember this for the rest of my days.

 

[Roge]

That's a great tip. Thanks for sharing.

Another method is to find a standard equivalent slightly bigger than the metric version. For example, a 7/32 allen key is 5.55 mm, may work in a stripped out 5 mm bolt, you may have to tap in the L-shaped wrench. I've done this numerous times with the standard allen key set that came with my x-hundred part starter tool set from Sears Craftsman that I got in the early 1980s.

 

[LarryFahn]

Here's another way that I've used for about 2 decades or so. When you round out a hex, take a Torx wrench and tap it in. Since the Torx wrenches are tapered this helps them bite into the hexs corners. Now you're not rounding the flats, but rather biting into the corners. This goes all the way back to when the disc bolts were 4mm hex instead of Torx. Ttyl, Fahn

 

[fishwrinkle]

have done this also, but with electrical solder.

 

[Gym123]

Another way it to cut a slot in the head and use a heavy flat-blade screwdriver, but the real problem is that the thread didn't release and the steel isn't hard enough, so the bolt should be replaced anyway. I have also ground a bit off of the faces of the tip of an Allen wrench and tapped it in if I didn't want to damage or sacrifice a Torx bit. If it's steel and there's no hope, I would probably pick a cheap Allen wrench and weld it to the bolt, add some PB Blaster and wait before trying to remove it. I have no patience for fasteners that should have been more durable.