Oil drain bolt from hell... Got it out!

The only way I could get mine off after it sitting 18 years was a pipe wrench !!:ohmy:
Pat

I had the same problem when I first got my bike. Just could not get the nut to move at all!. A neighbor suggested getting a little more leverage. He got a 3 foot long hollow bar which we put over the socket wrench and it was more than enough to free up the nut.

Thanks again everyone! Food for thought. Glad I'm not the only one with this problem...
WG, taking off the oilpan would not be a bad idea. The dealer I got the bike off of told me to "keep the choke half on, she likes it that way" so you know how thorough these guys were when they 'revived' the bike after sitting 12 yrs. And yes, I will have spare everything before going at it...

Patmann, i thought about that as a last resort. I'll try a socket (or bolt out set) and a breaker bar first.

BohicaBob, I have a (very) faint idea what your talking about, but maybe you could describe the procedure in some more detail? I have only used chisels for woodwork in the past....

Pant, breaker bar... 3ft.... check

He's just talking about taking a chisel and hammer and catching an edge on the bolt, then whack! Sometimes that's what it takes. I had to do that once on my truck with a nut for the fan clutch. Works surprisingly well.

my brother had the same problem with his kz 900. only solution was to give it a good smack with a chisel and hammer to loosen it up and it worked quite well. good luck.

Just to clarify, the idea of the chisel is to unscrew the bolt, not cut it off
With the sharp edge of the chisel vertical, put it on the side of the bolt at an angle so that the hammer blows force the bolt to rotate, thus unscrewing the bolt. Usually works when all else fails.

Thanks, savedrider and steell for helping out in clarifying how a chisel and hammer can be used very effectively to remove a drain plug.

The smaller chisel and hammer combo simply did not have enough torque. So I used a much larger combo.

Guess if I had a large enough combo, I could even counter-rotate the earth!

I had this same problem when I first got my bike. Oil filter and drain plug were all torn to heck. Funnily enough, I went to the store and bought a vice grip and a gator grip socket. I opened up the vice grip first since I figured even if it didn't work vice grips were nice to have around, but it didn't work. Ended up trying the gator grip, and it actually worked. I was pretty suprised. I think someone "borrowed" the damn socket though, cause I haven't seen it since. I made it a point not to torque the hell out of those bolts, so its not a problem now.

I also had the same problem, hammered a 16 mm socket on to it, and used a breaker bar..

I think alot of this is due to the time some of these bikes were sitting around but I think most of it is because its a oil plug/filter we all want to make sure its good and tight and over torque it in the process. So my fix for that was to drill a #40 hole through the head of the drain plug and the head of the filter bolt and lock wire them together.Now you can just snug them up, wire lock, and you will have no worries of them coming loose and losing all your oil, or wiping out yourself or your buddy behind you...

see the link if you don't know about lock wiring..

www.lrrsracing.com/RuleBook/lockwire.htm

1045

1045 wrote:

see the link if you don't know about lock wiring..

www.lrrsracing.com/RuleBook/lockwire.htm

1045

Thanks for the link 1045, thats good information for future reference;)

Hey guys, thanks everyone for the helpful suggestions. Luckily, a snug 6-point socket, a 24" breaker bar and some gentle pursuasion took care of the old bolts. They must have been way overtorqued.... Put some fresh ones in and torqued them to spec. I'll check em to see if they come loose.
Thanks for the link on lock wiring 1045. That is going to come in handy sometime.

I don't want to hijack this thread but I have the opposite problem. PO had teflon tape wrapped around the drain bolt to keep it snug! It is stripped, and when I changed the oil last night I found out. I did the same with the teflon tape but I'm not happy with how it feels, especially on the last half turn. It will keep turning if you give it the least bit of torque. Any suggestions on replacing, repairing etc.??? Will I need a new oil pan?
Oh yeah, it's on my 95 KZ1000P.